Two leading officials from Rally d’Italia Sardegna will lead Bulgaria in their bid for wo rld championship status in 2010. Rally Sardinia’s Clerk of the Course Lucio de Mori and Route Manager Carlo Cassina will hold these positions in Bulgaria Rally. Bulgaria is being officially Observed for WRC suitability on 17-19 July.
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Markko Martin returned to the Ford team as a test driver before Sardinia, having in recent years been engaged in test work for Prodrive on their Impreza WRC projects. The team reported he gave important suspension ideas. Jari-Matti Latvala said, "It was a good idea!" Christian Loriaux, "We wanted to have a test driver with no preconceived ideas, which is why we asked him. We had good feedback from him, his guidance happened to be in the same direction as we were going, anyway. It gave us a lot of confidence. I suspect he was expecting to find more wrong things in what we were doing!"
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Latvia’s PCWRC driver Andis Neiksans was banned from starting the rally, following a recce accident following which the Police confiscated his driving licence.
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Madeiran driver Bernardo Sousa maintained his unenviable record of Shakedown disasters. He crashed in the pre-rally Shakedown on his two previous PCWRC entries this year, Norway and Portugal, then here his Fiat Grand Punto broke its steering.
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Firstly Sebastien Ogier was given a six-rally programme, to prove his worth in the WRC, which meant, up to Sardinia. Then Citroen Racing gave h im one more, Acropolis, and now he has been tentatively entered for an eighth, Poland. "Everything depends on available funding", explained Olivier Quesnel, "and at the moment we do not yet know he can start in Poland." The entry was made, just in case.
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An extraordinary disaster befell the five Pirelli Star Drivers on the first morning. After three stages only two arrived at the midday service still running. Two stopped with mysterious fuel troubles. Williams had complete clutch failure while both Nikara and Thomas reported misfiring.
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Dani Sordo claimed the reason for checking in late at the start of the first stage, conveniently forcing Hirvonen to run on the road in front of him, was because he had "a damper problem", which was not generally believed. On stage three Sordo lost time with a broken front shock absorber, damaged when they hit a rock in the road. "It seems that the rock had been dislodged by the car in front of us," Sordo explained. That was Hirvonen’s.
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Confirmed by Ford the reason for Hirvonen’s retirement in Argentina, was a failure connected with the new electric water pump system in their car.
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M-Sport Technical Director Christian Loriaux talked about Latvala’s crash in Portugal. "It was of course a spectacular accid ent and because it was such a long accident it must have been very frightening, but it wasn’t the worst one we have had. There was no massive impact at high speed. The car did very well. The accident for Gig Galli in Germany, for me, was a lot more severe, hitting something immoveable very hard at high speed. What impressed me most was that the main rollcage tube has not moved at all, not a millimetre. That confirmed the way the cage was designed. It was a success for using the pyramid system which we started with the 2003 Focus, systems which other people have followed." .

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