Like Father like Son
By winning the Lautisz Rally 20 year old Hermann Gassner Junior has taken over the 2009 German rally championship title from his father, Herrman Senior. He and his codriver Kathi Wustenhagen won the final round of the series from the 19 year old Czech driver Martin Semerad, both Mitsubishi mounted. Hermann Junior jumped to international fame in 2008 when he won the Group N category on Rally Deutschland - for all the wrong reasons. He inherited the win when his father was excluded! But after winning four of the seven rounds of the series outright this year against more powerful cars, it was a perfect payback. Hermann Junior stuck this year with Evo IX cars while his father continued his rally career with the troublesome Evo X.

Europe and South America for IRC
Calendar details for the 2010 IRC (Intercontinental Rally Challenge) published last week show that all the events will be based in Europe except for two in South America. Currently the Rally of Brazil (Curitiba) is confirmed, business negotiations are in hand to confirm the Rally Argentina. Twelve events are listed, ten of them the same as 2009, newcomers being Cyprus and hopefully Argentina. Dropped for 2010 are events run in Russia and China. The Rally of Scotland, this year a distant eight weeks after the penultimate event, has been brought forward from November to October, three weeks before the final round in Cyprus. Five rallies are to be asphalt, another five on gravel and the other two on a combination of both! Entry for this year’s Rally of Scotland has closed on 16th of October and the entry list will be published tomorrow. Rallye Monte-Carlo has been confirmed as the venue for a major new television initiative. Eurosport Events, the promoters of the IRC series and the rally itself, claim this will be the most televised rally in history, with 14 hours of live coverage, from fourteen stages. It is planned then to carry out a similar coverage on four other events in 2010..

Other news
Heavy snows and fallen trees severely shortened the Bohemia Rally, based at the Skoda headquarters at Mlada Boleslav in northern Czech Republic. In the end one short stage was run on Day 1, and one stage was tackled three times on day 2. Only five stages were run. Skoda Fabia S2000 cars took the top three places, headed by Juho Hanninen, Jan Kopecky and Andreas Mikkelsen. Roman Kresta went off the road and finished only tenth but retained the national title.

Mads Ostberg won the Cambrian Rally in North Wales in Saturday by nearly two minutes in a Subaru Impreza WRC. Nasser Al Attiyah was fourth and best Group N driver after Eyvind Brynildsen lost time with a broken wheel on the final stage. Mikko Hirvonen drove M-Sport’s test Focus WRC as zero car. This event was the final round of the British clubman’s BTRDA championship had already been won by Dave Wright whose Evo IX retired with engine problem.

Rally-America Champion Travis Pastrana rounded off the season well when he finished miles ahead on the Lake Superior Rally in Michigan. His teammate Ken Block finished third and won the Super Production car category despite engine troubles.

Jani Paasonen, former OMV Production Car championship driver and then a works driver for the Skoda Fabia WRC team in the mid ‘00s has reemerged and is to contest the New York Rally, the final round of the alternative US Rally Championship next weekend.

Johnny Gemmell (Toyota) and Hergen Fekken (VW) go into this weekend’s final round of the South African championship equal on points. Under the national dropped-scores tie-deciding rule, Fekken holds a very slight advantage,

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