WRC2 CHAMPION 2022

Emil Lindholm Emil Lindholm

WRC2 CHAMPION 2022

Emil Lindholm Emil Lindholm

WRC2 CHAMPION 2022

Emil Lindholm Emil Lindholm

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Lindholm of WRC Rally Italia Sardegna: “It is a rally that is one of a kind”

02 June 2021

Team GRX’s Emil Lindholm and Reeta Hämäläinen, driving Toksport's Škoda Fabia R5 Evo, will start the World Rally Championship Rally Italia Sardegna with confidence. Reached from the recce, Lindholm is predicting the fifth World Rally Championship event of the season to be a survival battle.

The World Rally Championship in Sardinia, which starts on Friday morning, has always been a challenging gravel rally and will continue to be so also this year. The route of the WRC event on the island of Italy has been renewed by about a half since last autumn but it still does not offer any relief to competitors. Lindholm expects a really challenging competition from the rally starting on Friday morning.

“There’s quite interesting roads. It was known but surprised me nonetheless. The roads are narrow and in some places quite rocky with big rocks around the roads. A rally that is one of a kind”, says Lindholm, who was reached for the rally's recce.

Lindholm, competing for the first time in Sardinia, drove a preparatory test for the rally on Monday, which went well.

“After the experience in Portugal, we changed the settings of our car somewhat so we could move the weight of the car in turns and drive the turns more neatly”, Lindholm says.

For the weekend's rally, Pirelli; the tire supplier of the WRC-series, offers a hard compound tires as the number one option.

“The hard compound tires have been reserved the most and then eight medium compound tires, which are soft on the Pirelli lists. I don’t think tire wear is a big deal here but tire breakage should be avoided”, Lindholm says.

Lindholm says the goal for the weekend is to drive a full, complete rally and stay out of trouble.

“Even in WRC Portugal it was already seen that the results of Friday's first leg did not correlate any of the results of the rally. We have more of a survival battle ahead of us than a fast rally”, Lindholm reminds.

WRC Rally Italia Sardegna starts in Alghero with a ceremonial start late Thursday night Finnish time. Friday’s driving day consists of four special stages that are driven twice. First Sa Conchedda (22.29 km) and Terranova (14.36 km) in the morning twice and then after maintenance Tempio Pausania (12.08 km) and Tula (14.97 km) twice in the afternoon.

On Saturday the special stages of Loelle (15.00 km) and Monti di Alan (22.08 km) will be driven twice in the morning and after maintenance the special stages of Viddalba (14.70 km) and Castelsardo (13.03 km) will be driven twice in the afternoon.

The last day of the rally on Sunday consists of the two special stages of Braniatogghiu (15.25 km) and Santa Teresa (7.79 km), which the latter is a Power Stage with extra bonus points for drivers and manufacturers. The last special stage of the competition starts at 13:18 Finnish time.