ŠkodaPortal.cz Simply clever

Strasbourg, 30 September, 2011 – Friday was the first day of the last-but-one event of this year's SWRC. With eight stages to go on Day 1 (148 kilometres), both crews of the ŠKODA Red Bull team made an excellent start - championship leaders Hänninen & Markkula took the lead after Stage 2, Gassner & Wüstenhagen were third. However, Stage 3, the event's longest (36 km), saw both of them drop down the standings - Gassner to sixth and Hänninen to seventh.

When Juho Hänninen saw what kind of innovation the organisers had prepared on the track in the surroundings of Strasbourg (Alsace) - iron rods to prevent the drivers from cutting the bends and thus sweeping loads of dirt onto the road like last year – he realised immediately that it might be a problem. Stage 3 showed he had been right – a puncture in his right front tyre caused by one of the rods cost him a loss of over two minutes and sent him down the standings to seventh place. To make things even worse for ŠKODA Red Bull in Stage 3, bad luck hit Hermann Gassner as well – a loss of brake fluid slowed him down by nearly two minutes and caused him to fall from third to sixth. Both drivers then did their best to reduce the gap – after Day 1, Hänninen is fourth (+2.24 min) and Gassner sixth (+3.10 min).

Juho Hänninen: "I don't think that the iron rods in bends are the best of solutions – one of the drivers ahead of us must have displaced one of them from its position to protrude into the road. When we hit it, the tyre went flat in no time. Anyway, we still have many kilometres to go, and we will do our best to get back to the game!"

Hermann Gassner jun.: "Our whole team has had bad luck today. We made an excellent start, but then in Stage 3, the event's longest, we "lost the brakes", and that indeed made things difficult. We are not giving it up, though!"

The Rally de France continues on Saturday (Day 2) with nine stages (148 kilometres).

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