• Extremely demanding Rally Poland plays into the hands of experienced crews
• Clean run: Claire Schönborn and Michael Wenzel stay mistake-free
• Tricky tasks: changing grip levels and bumpy stages cost rhythm

There is only one thing that can make up for experience – even more experience: Claire Schönborn has finished Rally Poland in twelfth place out of 16 Junior crews. The third round of the Junior category within the FIA European Rally Championship (ERC) was a real handful, above all because of constantly changing grip levels and a notoriously bumpy road surface. Together with her co-driver Michael Wenzel, Claire Schönborn stayed mistake-free in these tricky conditions, but was unable to find the rhythm she was looking for. Rally Poland was overshadowed by heavy accidents that showed just how challenging the road conditions were, even for experienced crews. For Claire Schönborn, only her second rally on Tarmac in the Opel Corsa Rally4 therefore offered plenty to draw on: a chance to build up her bank of experience and to learn for the tasks ahead. Those are coming up soon – next in the all-electric ADAC Opel GSE Rally Cup at the ADAC Rallye Saarland-Pfalz in mid-August.

The overall victory at Rally Poland went to Schönborn’s driver coach Teemu Suninen and his co-driver Antti Haapala (FIN/FIN, Škoda). Celebrating their first win in the ERC Junior category were Tom Heindrichs/Jonas Schmitz (BEL/LUX), Claire Schönborn’s team-mates in the ADAC Opel Junior Rally Team.

“Rally Poland was anything but easy and, unfortunately, the potential for heavy accidents was high – you could see that from the number of incidents. Under those circumstances we drove a clean rally. But also one that – I’ll be honest – is probably among my weakest in terms of performance. We’ll take that away as experience and will now analyse what we can do better. Above all, I couldn’t get to grips with the changing grip levels on the very bumpy stages and never really found a rhythm. Congratulations to Teemu Suninen, my coach, who won the rally.”
CLAIRE SCHÖNBORN

“What an eventful weekend. Rally Poland was extremely demanding, above all because of the constantly changing conditions, which could only be judged with a great deal of experience. For a newcomer like Claire Schönborn that was a genuinely big challenge, and she handled it very well. The rally may not have gone the way she wanted, but it was a very important one for her development.”
TEEMU SUNINEN

Tricky Rally Poland around Katowice

This year, Rally Poland meant Katowice instead of Mikołajki and asphalt instead of gravel. The ERC round through Upper Silesia was a tough one – including road conditions that were hard to read. The spectacular spectator stage in the centre of Katowice (2.20 kilometres) got things under way on Friday evening. Added to that were highlights such as the legendary mountain stage “Przegibek” (6.50 kilometres), with more than fifty hairpins and switchbacks, and “Gmina Jasienica” (19.00 kilometres) with its ultra-narrow patchwork of asphalt. The final word on Sunday went to the 11.90-kilometre Power Stage “Województwo Śląskie”. Of the 15 scheduled stages covering a total of 187 competitive kilometres, two had to be cancelled for the ERC Juniors because of heavy accidents.