French Rally Championship - 25/27 November 2011 - The Citroën Racing Trophy in European colours!
Hats off to the Citroën Racing Trophy, which is taking up a new challenge in the last round of the French Tarmac Rally Championship! At the end of what has been a very successful European season, the French make has decided to bring together the DS3 R3s and C2-R2 MAXs, which have provided most of the excitement in the 2011 season. Thus, almost 35 cars will start the 57th Rallye du Var. It provides a goldenopportunity for the best foreign drivers to take on one another and measure themselves against the best France has to offer, and will lead to ding-dong battles among the front-runners.
From the east to the west, from Italy to Poland via Switzerland, seven European countries will be represented in this unique event. It is a mouth-watering programme with three legs consisting of 228 km timed stages in the heart of the beautiful Var countryside. Concerning the entries, France will be well represented by the two current tarmac trophy winners, Cédric Robert in his DS3 R3 and Guillaume Sirotin a C2-R2 MAX, as well as Mathieu Arzeno, Marc Amourette and Vincent Dubert. They will be up against a crop of skilled rivals including the Junior winner of the Italian Championship, Giuseppe Botta, talented Polish driver Jan Chmielewski as well as Robert Butor, the Hungarian champion at the wheel of a Citroën in 2010. There will also be two women drivers: Charlotte Dalmasso and Bulgarian EkaterinaStratieva who will be having her maiden outing on the Mediterranean roads.
“We were absolutely determined to make a splash around our different European formulas,” explains Frédéric Bertrand, the Compétition Client manager at Citroën Racing. “We already know who our French champions are as Cédric Robert and Guillaume Sirot won on tarmac in their respective categories, like Kevin Abbring and Frantz Comoli on gravel. The Var event seemed to us to be the ideal one to ring down the curtain in the best possible manner. We’ve made a point of inviting our clients as it helps us to bring together drivers from different horizons. All this means that the rally action will be all the more spectacular, and we’re proud to have attracted over thirty cars for this event.”
Rendezvous on Friday on the port of Sainte Maxime where the 202 entries will go up onto the ramp briefly before tackling the four timed stages around Collobrières, the first leg of the rally.
