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Longyou, 28 October, 2012 – ŠKODA is celebrating another motorsport achievement. The Chinese Rally, the final event of this year´s Asia-Pacific Rally Championship (APRC), saw the brand complete its mission to win its first title in the Manufacturers category. In addition to that, Chris Atkinson & Stephane Prevot are celebrating victory in the Drivers category of the APRC. After winning the IRC and the European Championship, ŠKODA has added another valuable achievement to become enormously successful on two continents that are vitally important for its business.

Commenting on this historic achievement, Head of ŠKODA´s motorsport activities Michal Hrabánek says: "We have made great achievements with the ŠKODA Fabia Super 2000 on two continents that are of vital importance for ŠKODA´s future business. We are pleased to have demonstrated the high quality of the Škoda Fabia Super 2000 also outside Europe and we believe we have laid solid foundations here to build on in the future. I wish to thank all those who have contributed to this result".

The winners of the APRC are Chris Atkinson & Stephane Prevot in a ŠKODA Fabia Super 2000, MRF´s Australian-Belgian crew for whom this is the first victory in this championship. They sealed their overall victory by coming second at the China Rally, and Chris is very proud of their achievement: "This is our first overall victory in this championship, and it is indeed a great success for all of us. The past years have shown how difficult it is to succeed here, and it was a big challenge for us to make it this year. I´d like to thank all the guys for providing excellent support and preparing the great ŠKODA Fabia Super 2000 absolutely perfectly". Chris Atkinson regularly appears in the WRC, his co-driver Stephane Prevot used to be part of ŠKODA Motorsport (factory team) where he acted as Bruno Thiry´s navigator.

The Asia-Pacific Championship was made up of six events – New Zealand, New Caledonia, Australia, Malaysia, Japan and China. Atkinson & Prevot won in New Zealand and Australia and finished second at each of the other events (except for Japan where they did not appear). MRF is an Australian-Indian team supported by the Indian ŠKODA importer. The team´s other crew, Gaurav Gill (India) & Glenn Macneall (Australia), triumphed at the New Caledonia Rally.

ŠKODA won its third consecutive IRC title this year to become the most successful brand in the history of this championship, and this also year saw a third consecutive victory by a factory crew in a ŠKODA Fabia Super 2000 in the Drivers category (Juho Hänninen & Mikko Markkula in 2010 and Andreas Mikkelsen & Ola Floene in 2011 and 2012). Hänninen & Markkula won this year´s European Championship and Jan Kopecký & Pavel Dresler (factory crew) triumphed in the Czech Championship. Furthermore, drivers of ŠKODA Fabia Super 2000s won national rally championship titles in Austria (Raimund Baumschlager), Germany (Mark Wallenwein), Slovenia (Aleks Humar) and Turkey (Luca Rossetti).

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