Day report: Junior star Gryazin on top in ERC, Huttunen closing

Sports Racing Technology driver Gryazin has led since stage two this morning but two stage wins at the end of leg one allowed Huttunen to recoup 3.1s, the pair now separated by only 11.0s with six stages still remaining on Sunday.

Huttunen’s speed despite not taking part in any pre-event testing is not a great surprise, using his experience as a title contender in ERC Junior Under 27 last year to great effect.

His former ERC Junior U27 team-mate Chris Ingram is third overall and locked in a tight battle with ŠKODA AUTO Deutschland’s Fabian Kreim. Though he briefly fell behind mid-afternoon, Ingram swiftly regained second in ERC Junior U28 from Kreim on the rerun of Stare Juchy. The pair are separated by a mere 1.7s.

Miko Marczyk continued the ERC Junior U28 dominance on PZM Rally Poland, making it four Juniors in the overall top five and also finishing leg one fourth in Junior U28.

Despite having less gravel experience under his belt than the competitive distance of this event alone, Marczyk held his own, ending leg one ahead of past Polish champions Grzegorz Grzyb (Rufa Sport) and Łukasz Habaj (eSky Rally Team) in sixth and seventh respectively.

The Polish trio had been swapping places all afternoon, though ŠKODA Polska Motorsport driver Marczyk can hold comfort from all of Grzyb’s attentions being on securing his Polish crown, which he is battling against Habaj for.

Autoklub of Czech Republic-backed Filip Mareš moved into eighth place overall and fifth in ERC Junior U28 late on, taking advantage of a mistake by Tiger Energy Drink Rally Team’s Tomasz Kasperczyk. The Pole glanced a tree on stage eight, dropping half a minute and allowing Mareš to swoop in, demoting him to ninth.

Despite a quick trip off-road in the opening stage Norbert Herczig completes the top 10, driving his MOL Racing Team ŠKODA Fabia R5.

Aside from a lairy moment in the opening test which damaged his rear bumper, Marcin Słobodzian had a successful day aboard his Subaru Poland Rally Team-prepared Impreza STi, securing his lead in the ERC2 production category.

Leg one recap: Juniors thrill as Lukyanuk spills
PZM 75th Rally Poland kicked off under the low dusk lighting of Mikołajki on Friday night with plenty of sensational sideways action. Qualifying Stage winner Lukyanuk took the initiative by winning the opening superspecial. That lead didn’t last long, as ERC Junior Under 28 frontrunner Gryazin moved straight into the lead first thing on Saturday morning with victory on stage two. Nobert Herczig meanwhile showed it wasn’t just his car that featured flashes of green but his fingers too, having a venture off-road and losing a few seconds with a trip through someone’s garden.

Stage three reminded the field how narrow the margins on PZM Rally Poland’s ultra-fast roads can be, with two leading contenders both striking trees and ending their respective days early.

Oversteering entering a fast left, ERC champion-elect Alexey Lukyanuk ended up off-line over the following jump, landing wide and whacking the right rear of his Russian Performance Motorsport Ford Fiesta off a tree. That came only moments after another podium contender fell by the wayside, as ERC Junior U27 graduate Łukasz Pieniążek struck an entirely different tree 400 metres into the Świętajno test. Unfortunately for Pieniążek, his car was so badly damaged by the impact he won’t be returning under Rally2 for leg two.

The subsequent shakeup was immediate. Jari Huttunen moved to a second place he would hold for the rest of leg one, while Chris Ingram’s successful overhauling of ŠKODA AUTO Deutschland junior Fabian Kreim took him from sixth straight to third. Fellow ERC Junior U28 Miko Marczyk showed pace beyond his experience, jumping straight from eighth to fifth despite having less than 200 kilometres of gravel running under his belt before this weekend.

Stare Juchy’s first pass was the beginning of the end for Dariusz Poloński, a regular in ERC3 last season. A fuel pump failure stopped him for nearly four minutes and, though he would manage to crawl through the next test and reach midday service, he would go no further on Saturday.

Ingram was in awe of the breakneck speeds PZM Rally Poland offers its competitors. He needed equally fast reactions on stage five, a deer spectacularly leaping over the bonnet of his Toksport WRT Fabia while pushing to keep ERC Junior U28 championship rival Kreim behind him.

After midday service one of Ingram and Kreim’s rivals was eliminated by a foreign object, though thankfully an inanimate one this time. Getting tail-happy on Paprotki’s tarmac section and striking a hay bale, PEUGEOT Rally Academy’s Laurent Pellier irreparably damaged the radiator on his 208 T16, bowing out of ninth place overall.

Świętajno’s afternoon run took no scalps this time around but still gave ERC crews plenty of near misses. Ingram’s Toksport WRT team-mate Orhan Avcioğlu skated wide at a tight right hander, then moments later brushed one of Świętajno’s now infamous trees. Polish ERC Junior U28 contender Tomasz Kasperczyk meanwhile went one step further, going nose first into a tree with his Tiger Energy Drink Rally Team Fiesta and losing half a minute.

With Lukyanuk out of the picture, Gryazin had gone on a stage-winning spree, remaining unbeaten all the way until stage eight. Huttunen had tied the ERC Junior U28 star for fastest time on stage five but finally took centre stage himself, eating 1.5s into the younger Russian rocket’s lead with a stage victory of his own.

Huttunen repeated the feat again to finish the day, winning the leg-closing Mikolajki MAX test 1.6s up on Gryazin, while behind Grzyb snatched away sixth place from national championship rival Habaj at the very end.

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