The brand new Citroën C2R2
Cup rally cars turned a wheel in anger for the first time
at last weekend’s Pirelli International Rally, with
Welsh rookie Jason Pritchard scooping the honours in his
first full season of competition.
The Citroën C2R2 Cup is a new-for-2007 one-make rally
championship set up by Simon Preston, director of official
Citroën Sport dealer, Total Motorsport Solutions,
and previously organiser of the similar Peugeot 206 Cup.
The Cup runs alongside all 6 events on the prestigious
British Rally Championship’s calendar, and has been
designed to nurture young, new British rallying talent
by creating a level playing field, as each driver pilots
an identical version of Citroën’s diminutive,
but agile, C2 car.
The front-wheel drive rally cars are road-legal C2s fitted
with a kit supplied by TMS, and boast 185bhp and a five-speed
sequential gearbox.
Competitors in the C2R2 Cup are eligible to score points
and cash awards in the R2 class of the BRC, as well as
the chance to be selected as a Pirelli Star Driver, which
gives participants the opportunity to win a top BRC drive
in 2008.
In addition, the driver crowned C2R2 Cup champion at the
end of the ’07 season will win a test in the full-specification
C2 S1600 rally car on which the C2R2 machine is based.
Powys-based driver Pritchard, 18, co-driven by the experienced
Martin Jones, only started rallying in December 2005,
but a mature, restrained drive saw him take the C2 win,
and second overall in the R2 class of the rally, while
many of his rivals tried a little too hard!
C2R2 Cup organiser Simon Preston said: “I was very
pleased with the way the championship started –
there was not a single mechanical failure that was down
to poor product. A lot of the drivers went out all guns
blazing but you can’t do that in a brand new car
that you’ve never rallied before, and the way Jason
went about the job was very mature, absolutely the right
way.”
The second round of the C2R2 Cup will be held at the famous
Jim Clark International Rally in Scotland, on May 25/26.
