French motorsport star Pierre Ragues has put in a totally dominant performance in this weekend’s Rallye de Lisieux, part of the Coupe de France des Rallyes, as he claimed victory in eight of the event’s nine stages.

 

Unfortunately, two notable incidents caused Ragues to pick up significant time delays during the rally, which left him in an unrepresentative sixth position overall at the end of the event this afternoon. 

 

The rally had got off to an inauspicious start after Pierre’s co-driver Tibo Gorczyca became ill and had to be replaced at the last moment by Steve Reydellet. However, the duo took to their Citröen DS3 R5, equipped with Michelin tyres, in positive spirits on Saturday morning.

 

The first stage, an opening run of the 13.8km Courtonne stage, was unfortunately where the first issue arose as Pierre picked up a puncture. That required a wheel change mid-stage, which lost over two minutes of time and put the local driver on the back foot. 

 

From then on, though, Pierre pushed hard to reclaim the lost time – and was doing a great job by winning all stages. He would have been likely to regain the lead of the rally by the end of Sunday – despite the onset of wetter conditions on Sunday morning. However, the crew was deemed to have clocked in too early for SS7, for which the organisers imposed a one-minute time penalty. With any chance at victory gone, Pierre still picked up stage wins to reaffirm his competitiveness – but had to settle for sixth place overall.

 

Pierre commented: “I am naturally a bit disappointed that we were not able to take the victory in this rally, which I think we deserved. We were playing catch up from the first stage after the puncture lost us around two minutes of time but we pushed really hard and could find a fantastic rhythm in the car to pick up several stage wins. We had dry conditions on Saturday but had to switch to wet tyres this morning. We were still quick but we were hit by a one-minute time penalty after SS7 for clocking into the stage too early. It really put an end to our fight-back but I am still really happy to have shown competitive pace. It’s a shame we couldn’t fight for the win but it gives me a nice boost of confidence in my rallying, which I share with my partners Group Auto, Top Garage, Sparco and Ellip6 – I’m sure we’ll be able to celebrate rally wins in the future.”