• Extremely fast, extremely tricky versus extremely clever: Claire Schönborn takes sixth place on Rali Ceredigion with carefully calculated risk
• Close to the limit, never over it – the European Rally Championship round in mid-Wales provokes a string of offs and crashes in adverse weather
• Best placing to date for Schönborn/Wenzel in the Junior category of the FIA European Rally Championship (ERC) on the year’s final Tarmac round

No place for rookie nerves – and Claire Schönborn and her co-driver Michael Wenzel kept theirs on the trickiest rally of the year. The ADAC Opel Rally Junior Team pairing produced a composed, level-headed drive on the UK round through mid-Wales to take sixth place, and with it their best result so far in the Junior ERC category on a round of the FIA European Rally Championship (ERC). While a number of rival crews paid the price for the high-speed stages and tricky weather conditions with offs and crashes, Schönborn/Wenzel kept it clean on their Rali Ceredigion debut. Overall victory in the Junior category went to Claire Schönborn’s Opel team-mates Timo Schulz/Maresa Lade (GER/GER).

What made it difficult was not the distance so much as the character of the stages – narrow, typically Welsh lanes with crests, blind corners, walls and hedges right on the edge of the road, plus constantly changing surfaces, from grippy new asphalt to washed-out sections covered in loose chippings and mud. Stages that are demanding at the best of times were a level harder again in this year’s edition. The particular challenge for every crew: the pacenotes, thinking and reacting quickly on the extremely fast sections, the changes in the weather and the conditions, and finding a suitable set-up for the car.

“This rally has gone straight to the top of my list of favourites. It’s a dream to drive here, even if the conditions and the challenge were immense. The speed, the weather, the many changes in grip – it would have been easy to make a costly mistake here. That makes me all the happier that we came through without incident – and with good stage times. Finishing this rally was hard work, and on top of that stages ahead of us were stopped and we didn’t always get two runs, before the Power Stage for example. But I’m more than satisfied with how we handled all of it.”
CLAIRE SCHÖNBORN

Finland on Tarmac? Faster, narrower, trickier!

The fifth round of the Junior ERC within the FIA European Rally Championship (ERC) took in 16 special stages and around 191 asphalt kilometres through Wales. A super special and night stages on Friday were followed on Saturday by eight moorland stages east of Aberystwyth, before Sunday closed the event on classic Welsh country roads with Gorsgoch and Ty Glyn, the latter run as the Power Stage. Narrow, with blind crests, walls and hedges, and with surfaces changing all the time, the stages added up to one of the toughest assignments of the season; rain arriving on Saturday morning added further spice. The comparison with “Finland on Tarmac” held good in every respect thanks to the jump crests and flat-out sections, with Welsh weather and the many changes in grip thrown in for good measure.

Overall victory went to Kris Meeke/Noel O’Sullivan (AND/IRL, Toyota), while Claire Schönborn’s driver coach Teemu Suninen and co-driver Antti Haapala (FIN/FIN, Škoda) drove a controlled run to second place and celebrating the European title.

In the Junior ERC standings, Claire Schönborn lies tenth of 20 registered crews on 33 points in her debut season, ahead of the finale in Portugal (23–25 October) – even though she has competed in one rallye fewer.