SAN MARINO
Already he had to go first, and getting everyone else off the slippery gravel was not an advantage. But Giandomenico Basso will remember this Rally of San Marino as one of the worst of his career for another reason: his Skoda Fabia evo R5, after having suffered some ignition problems at the exit from the second reorganization, arrived at the start of the penultimate special, did not wanted to know to get going.
He retired like this, without even being able to try to carry that assault on the leadership he had shown to have in the ropes. This zero in the ranking has a weight, although not enormous. For heaven’s sake, Crugnola retired and with him raised the white flag one of the most dangerous opponents in the Italian Rally Championship key, which in San Marino was staged with its fourth race. But the second place of Andolfi, absent from the Targa Florio for pneumonia, relaunches the Savona for the conquest of Cir. Now he leads it and no longer Giando, in any case second three and a half points from the top. Nothing lost, as is evident, but things were looking pretty good for the cavasotto. After a necessarily complicated first lap that had seen him finish in sixth place, Giando had launched the first paw in the sixth special stage. That victory of piesse gave confidence, partly removed from the subsequent test of Sestino, a historic part of the race: Crugnola had retired there, Campedelli had punctured and above all Costenaro had beaten badly, occupying the roadway. Basso, who started behind him, had caught the red flag and a time imposed which had prevented him in one stroke from fighting to win the race and had deepened his detachment from Andolfi: «Everything that shouldn’t have happened has happened. My advantage was canceled out », he had hotly declared to the microphones of Rallylink.
Everything still had to be written: there were still about twenty kilometers to go and the feeling was that in the last Sestino there would be some good ones. This was not the case, for the reasons we know. At the head of the Cir is Andolfi with 46.5 points, second Giando at 43 and third Breen at 41. The result that was taking shape for Basso could have been something very similar to a coat, but it wasn’t. He had not returned to San Marino since 2016, and the fact that he was there with the first confirms what had already been understood in Sanremo and seen in Sicily: Basso is holding his Fabia, even on land. The assault on Cir will restart from Rome. –
Niccolò Budoia