Rally Liepaja is held in Latvia as the second round of ERC, and the first event on gravel in 2020. Crews raced most than 175 kilometers in two days, divided into ten special stages (SS).
Four Citroën C3 Rally2 were engaged : Mads Ostberg - Torstein Eriksen (PH Sport), Alexey Lukyanuk - Dmitriy Eremeev (Sainteloc) and Sean Johnston - Alexander Kihurani (Sainteloc) in ERC, Efren Llarena - Sara Fernandez (Rally Team Spain) in ERC Junior.
Traditionally, start order on gravel plays a key role during the rally. A cleaning or sweeping effect penalises first runners, who struggle to find grip on lose gravel as they clear the line for next drivers.
Unlike WRC, ERC regulation includes a qualifying stage to define first day start order for the top 15 drivers. Winner of said qualifying stage gets to choose his starting position for the first day, and so on. On a gravel event with road cleaning, the winner usually tries to start as far back as possible in order to benefit from clear line and better grip.
Day 1 of rally Liepaja is composed of four stages. Alexey Lukyanuk, recent Roma Capitale winner and current ERC leader, managed to finish first day in third position after an incredible effort. Despite suffering from cleaning compared to his rivals, the Russian driver (Citroën C3 Rally2, Sainteloc) pushed hard and even scored a stage win in SS4, the last of day 1.
Mads Ostberg (Citroën C3 Rally2, PH Sport) finished day 1 in second position, 10 seconds off the lead. For his first rally since his WRC-2 victory in Sweden, the norwegian driver opted for a steady approach, while testing set ups for next WRC-2 rally in Estonia.
Llarena and Johnston were both discovering Citroën C3 Rally2 on gravel. Though finding confidence in the car, they both suffered from road cleaning effect and respectively finished day 1 in 13th and 14th positions.
Day 2 of Rally Liepaja consisted of seven special stages, with lots of high speed sections. While leader Oliver Solberg was on a mission, Ostberg and Lukyanuk both secured their podium positions to finish in second and third positions. Russian crew Lukyanuk - Eremeev even scored second place points as Mads Ostberg was transparent for ERC points.
With better road positions and less cleaning effet, both Efren Llarena and Sean Johnston considerably improved their times and closed the gap with top 5 drivers performance wise. Llarena - Fernandez finished ninth overall and fourth in ERC Junior category, and Johnston - Kihurani completed the top 10.
After the second event in ERC, Lukyanuk - Eremeev (Sainteloc, Citroën C3 Rally2) leads the championship with a four point gap over Oliver Solberg.