PETERHANSEL RETAINS THE LEAD
As the 2008 Central Europe Rally moved back into Hungary for the fourth day of competition, Stéphane Peterhansel and his co-driver Jean-Paul Cottret succeeded in maintaining their overall lead of 1m44s. The terrain north of Lake Balaton turned out to be a less happy hunting ground for the three Mitsubishi Pajero Evolution MPR13s, as Luc Alphand/Gilles Picard and Nani Roma/Lucas Cruz fell back to sixth and seventh place, respectively.
The first of today's two stages was a repeat of the predominantly sandy and bumpy test that kicked off the event last Sunday - characterised by combinations of long straights and tight bends. As on the opening day, Mitsubishi's trio tended to be less at home in this part of the Hungarian countryside than they had been over the punishing mountain tracks of the Baia Mare region in Romania.
The afternoon saw the caravan head southwest for the day's second stage near Lake Balaton. Once again, this was military terrain through which the organisers had devised a long and complex route within a very compact area, where picking a way through the taped-off roads was a particularly taxing challenge.
Stéphane Peterhansel commented "I think our rivals had the edge when it came to powering out of the many tight corners and it wasn't quite so easy to settle into a rhythm as it had been on Monday or Tuesday. This afternoon's test was much less fun and perhaps a little unpredictable at times, because there were places where we came across other cars on parallel tracks, and we weren't always certain that we were on the right road.”
Luc Alphand took time to praise the work of his co-driver Gilles Picard who faced one of the most challenging days of the event so far from a navigating point of view. "Our day didn't get off to the best of starts when the windscreen wiper on my side was broken by an overhanging branch and stopped working halfway into this morning's rainy stage."
