We won’t be forgetting Telti – Calangianus – Berchidda in a hurry.
Granted, as a stage name it hardly rolls off the tongue, but the action and drama it delivered across both of Friday’s loops at Rally Italy Sardinia will live long in the memory.
Especially if you’re reading this as one of the six (yes, six) Rally1 drivers who were caught out by it.
A brand-new addition to the itinerary this year, DirtFish’s Colin Clark and David Evans had already identified as a hazardous stage on recce, due to its higher-than-average speed for Sardinia.
But who could have predicted quite what was going to unfold?
M-Sport team principal Richard Millener may well have nightmares about it in evenings to come. Quite incredibly, all three of the ‘works’ Pumas retired on the first pass.
Grégoire Munster was first in and therefore first to fall – the Luxembourger picked up TV cameras crawling through the stage with broken rear-right suspension.
A disaster, we all thought. But then it got worse.
Josh McErlean made a similar error to his team-mate, but did a better job of it so to speak – ripping the entire rear-left corner off of his purple machine.
If there was an award for the most dramatic exit however, it had to go to Mãrtiņs Sesks. The Latvian got it wrong over a fifth-gear jump, headed for the protective fence and was quickly into a series of rolls.
The damage was so extensive that M-Sport cannot economically repair it for tomorrow, meaning Sesks’ Sardinian story lasted just two stages.
Usually, when a stage has been so dramatic on the first pass, things will calm down on the second. But the reigning world champion, and then rally leader, Thierry Neuville tossed that script straight in the trash.
Smacking a bank on the left after a crest, Neuville’s Hyundai was instantly broken and he parked it up down the road. Telti – Calangianus – Berchidda had claimed its biggest victim.
A slow, tight hairpin then disrupted Takamoto Katsuta and the sole surviving Ford of privateer Jourdan Serderidis, who both rolled and spent the rest of the leg hampered by the damage it caused.
All of that drama points to one simple question: what was so difficult about that particular stage?
“It’s a super narrow and technical stage, definitely not easy,” offered Kalle Rovanperä.
“It’s the fastest stage of the weekend and the most narrow, so it equals trouble sometimes.”
You don’t say.
Rally leader Sébastien Ogier provided further insight.
It was the fact the stage was both fast and narrow that made it tricky, says Ogier
“It was so narrow and so fast together,” Ogier told DirtFish. “It means it’s a very small line, [and if you make a] mistake then you’re straight away hitting something very hard. Many drivers experienced that unfortunately for them today.
“I was a bit careful on the second one, but I’m happy I managed to react still on the second pass. Once my notes were validated, I could be more on the limit without being too crazy and didn’t lose too much, at least on the second pass.”
Second-placed Adrien Fourmaux admitted to having a moment over the same jump that wrecked Sesks’ weekend.
“You see where Martins had a mistake this morning?” he quizzed.
Yes, we did.
“I had also a nice jump on this one, on the first pass. And I have to say we recce at 60kph, but at the same time you can expect a car in front so you slow down over the crest, so we pass at 40kph and we arrive at 180.
“So [you can] imagine [how] it’s not easy to really judge the speed you can carry in this corner.”
Caution was Fourmaux’s strategy over this particular stage.
Fourmaux quickly realized it wasn't a stage to be a hero on - even if he did have his own moment!
“That was a tricky one, for sure,” he explained. “To be fair, I was really careful in some places to make sure I don’t make mistakes where people make mistakes on the first pass, but some of us made other mistakes on the second pass!
“So it was a really, really tricky one. So fast, but narrow. Under the shade, we don’t see the rocks and things so it was really not easy. I really tried to be smooth, to not be surprised in any way, and it did work.
“In the end we lost I think two or three seconds from the best time, so I was happy with that, because I knew I didn’t take so much risk.”
Ott Tänak rounds out the overnight podium and viewed the stage similarly to his rivals.
“It was definitely a tricky one. Most of the stages are actually very fast,” he observed.
“Lots of straights, but very strange characteristics with all these super long corners, but obviously very, very narrow with all the stones and banks on the sides.
“Yeah, it was definitely a bit challenging and it needed quite a different, let’s say, approach or style.”
The six who were spared of the stage’s perils clearly adopted that different approach or style.
The other six didn’t.
