Zoom Vouilloz pushed hard for his maiden win in Turkey

With a little more than half of the 2007 calendar completed, there couldn't be more suspense at the sharp end of the provisional Intercontinental Rally Challenge (IRC) standings.

After the first five rounds, Abarth/BFGoodrich (3 wins) and Peugeot/BFGoodrich (2 wins) are separated by a single point in the Manufacturers' championship. On the Drivers' front, Italian Andrea Navarra has led since the beginning of the season but has seen his early advantage cut to just one point by Spain's Enrique Garcia Ojeda, while BFGoodrich has overcome stiff competition to claim five wins from five.

For the American tyre brand, which won both World Rally Championship titles in 2006 and which has gone unbeaten on the Dakar since 2002, the Intercontinental Rally Challenge stands out as a double challenge.

In addition to being a chance to showcase its customer competition products in conditions ranging from the rough dirt of the Safari Rally and the fast, flowing gravel stages of Rally Russia to the asphalt roads of Ypres and Madeira, the series also offers welcome competition between tyre manufacturers and three firms are officially involved in the 2007 IRC.

In association with its partners Abarth and Peugeot, BFGoodrich has won every one of the five Intercontinental Rally Challenge events that have taken place to date. The calendar kicked off in Africa with the punishing tracks of the Rally of Kenya. This event, which used to be the toughest test of the entire World Rally Championship for tyres, was a huge challenge for BFGoodrich, especially since the IRC's rules prohibit the use of mousse run-flat systems.

For the occasion, the brand's engineers developed a specially-strengthened version of the g-Force Gravel designed to withstand the constraints of the Kenyan stages. The result of their work saw Andrea Navarra (Abarth Grande Punto S2000) top the classification for IRC runners. With the exception of one puncture resulting from an 'off,' the Italian driver did not report the slightest problem with his tyres over the two days of the season's roughest fixture.

As a former qualifying round of the World Rally Championship based near Antalya in the south of the country, the Rally of Turkey was renowned for its rough mountain stages. The IRC version of the event, which is now run near Istanbul, features a programme of fast, wide tests that are not particularly hard-wearing on tyres, despite the presence of some particularly sharp stones.