Fly By Rally Club Week 5 – Snow and Gravel Pain, Tarmac Gain

Описание: Week 5 of the Fly By Rally Club serves up a proper sampler of what Richard Burns Rally can throw at you: three legs, nine stages, and a progression from snow to gravel to tarmac. Leg 1 covers 22.1 km on snow, opening with Kuadonvaara on fresh Snow tyres before rolling into Foron Snow and Erken II with the same set carried across the roadside services. Leg 2 shifts to gravel after a full service, with Elmenteita, Cierru Los Pinos 2, and Swiss Gravel on Dry Gravel tyres. Leg 3 then moves onto Tarmac Dry for La Atalaya, Joukkovaara Tarmac, and Stoccareddo after another service reset.

On paper, the preparation was there. Recce was more careful than usual, notes were more considered, and the intent was to build a solid, steady run rather than chase outright stage wins. In practice, the rally had other ideas. Mistakes on the loose-surface legs proved costly: crashes forced SuperRally retirements that wiped out the last two stages of the opening snow leg and the final stage of the gravel leg. Those incidents meant taking automatic penalty times on four stages and watching a significant chunk of the rally’s total distance disappear from actual driving.

Tarmac, however, was a different story. Once onto the final leg, the car and driver finally seemed to be on the same wavelength. All three asphalt stages were completed cleanly, with the rhythm and confidence that had been missing earlier in the event. While the damage from the SuperRally penalties could not be undone, the strong tarmac leg salvaged something from the week: by the time the final times were tallied, the result was a provisional P7 overall, with a day of competition still remaining for others to finish.

It is a rally that feels disappointing on the results sheet, especially after putting extra effort into recce and still throwing away stages on snow and gravel. At the same time, it reinforces a clear pattern: tarmac is becoming more of an ally, and when the car stays pointing in roughly the right direction, the pace is there. The goal now is obvious: take the composure and consistency from that final leg and find a way to carry it back onto the loose surfaces in future Fly By events.

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