Jeremy Ancian wins in France - Burkart leads Championship!

Following the recent Rallye Deutschland, the JWRC championship continued on Tarmac last weekend with the Rally de France, for the first time, moving to a brand new location in the Strasbourg region of Northern France.

Two Suzuki S1600's were entered in this event in the JWRC category; current championship leader and Suzuki regular - Aaron Burkart and a talented local 'wildcard' entrant by the name of Jeremy Ancian being managed by the German 'Recce Rent' team headed up by former Suzuki works driver; Niki Schelle. Karl Kruuda, another usual Suzuki pilot was absent due to the fact that this was the event that he elected to miss as part of the JWRC regulations.

All three days of the event were full of challenges for the drivers, the weather and the constantly changing road conditions meant that everyone had to cope with rain and shine, dry and wet! All of the entrants suffered punctures at some stage during the three days with the leaderboard changing many times. Thierry Neuville was able to win many stages whilst Kevin Abbring, Alessandro Broccoli and Yeray Lemes all forced to retire due to various incidents.

The local wildcard entrant and Suzuki pilot - Jeremy Ancian drove incredibly well for his first time, winning the Junior category of the event. Suzuki regular; Aaron Burkart finishing a solid 5th place scoring him 10 points and giving him a championship lead of 8 points over his Citroen rival; Hans Weijs. The JWRC title coming down to the wire in the penultimate round to be held in two weeks times at the Rally Catalunya in Spain.

"Following the event, Suzuki pilot - Aaron Burkart commented; "Well this was an event full of new challenges and I think that I have been able to learn a lot from this. The changing road conditions and the debris brought on to the road from the many cars in front cutting corners made the surface very slippery, it was not possible to select the perfect tyre for every stage and there were many compromises. Nevertheless, we survived and finished the event.

Even though this was not my best event ever, we are still leading the championship and now I just have to try harder in the Catalunya Rally"

Suzuki Sport Europe team manager Yasuhiro Ishii commented "We think that overall the Suzuki S1600 has done a perfect job, running faultlessly once more. We are pleased that both Suzuki's were able to show their performance again and we congratulate Jeremy's team for their great win. Aaron finished 5th, not his best rally ever, but we hope that the point advantage gained here in France will be enough to help make the task of securing the JWRC title a little easier in Spain. We will continue our efforts to be immaculately prepared for the final battle"