Zoom Two wins... two hats

Luca Rossetti and Matteo Chiarcossi took their BFGoodrich-equipped Peugeot 207 to their fourth IRC victory from four starts today in Portugal. Following their recent win in Turkey, the Italian pair came up with the goods yet again to claim the Algarve-based event ahead of the Czech Republic's Jan Kopecky (Peugeot) and 2007 IRC runner-up Nicolas Vouilloz (Peugeot).

The BFGoodrich Drivers Team operation was a popular success despite the dramatic last-minute retirement of Miguel Campos/Paulo Babo on the final road section while they were lying eighth.

Is anyone capable of rivalling Luca Rossetti in this year's Intercontinental Rally Challenge? Since the Italian's debut in the series twelve months ago, all his rivals have bitten the dust in their bid to prevent him from taking the spoils in the rounds he has contested with his Peugeot/BFGoodrich.

This weekend, not one of the four former World Champions or the two past European Champions entered for the 2008 Rally de Portugal was able to challenge the Pordenone-based driver, despite the furious pace which produced significant improvements in stage times compared to those posted by the top S2000 cars on the same tests in 2007: SS8 (16km, 26s quicker) and SS9 (25km, 43s faster)!

After claiming the short super-special through the spectator-lined streets of Faro on Thursday evening, Luca Rossetti completed the long first day on top of the provisional leaderboard after 118km of against-the-clock action over the dusty tracks of the Algarve.

Yesterday evening, however, experts were predicting that the Italian would have trouble holding on to his lead since the Peugeot 207 driver would be first on the road today and would consequently find himself sweeping a cleaner line for his rivals running further down the road order. But that simply wasn't to be the case!

Having chosen re-cut hard compound BFGoodrich g-Force Gravel tyres for the morning's stages, he posted the fastest time on SS8 to strengthen his lead before his main opponents started to fall from contention one by one. François Duval (Abarth) had just eased into second place, for example, when he was halted by a wheel-bearing failure, while Nicolas Vouilloz (Peugeot) dropped back from third after picking up a puncture.

Jan Kopecky (Peugeot) was already familiar with certain stages for having contested the same event last year when it was a WRC qualifying round. The quick and consistent Czech was finally rewarded with the silver medal which, following his fifth place in Turkey, makes him a serious candidate for this year's IRC title.