Sixt Cardiff were pleased to assist the organisers of the Wales Rally GB which was the final round and title deciding event of the 2011 World Rally Championship which would either see Current champion Sebastian Loeb (Citroen) win a record breaking 8th title or Finland’s Mikko Hirvonen, poised to take the championship.

Sixt at the Wales Rally

Sixt Cardiff’s Manager Richard Stock has had a involvement in Motor Sport for many years, along with Sales Manager Mark Tew, Liasing with rally organisers International Motorsport Ltd, Sixt supplied a number of support vehicles for functions such as timing, safety and various FIA vehicles in addition a fleet of minibuses were provided to shuttle the various officials and drivers from Cardiff Castle to their various hotels.

Richard also got involved with the organisers and for the period of the event drove various officials and visitors around the event in one of the official vehicles, Richard takes up the story.

Richard Stock with Mikko Hirvonen and Timo Rautiainen

“Having always had a interest and involvement in Motorsport I jumped at the opportunity to help out and get involved with the event organisers. It was fantastic to meet and drive around some real Rally Legends, and with the drive from Rally Headquarters in Cardiff to the service area in Builth Wells taking an hour and a half there was plenty of opportunity to chat with them.
On the final day of the event I had to drive various officials and dignitaries to the Finish in the fantastic grounds of Cardiff Castle where the podium and winners ramp were set up, it was great to meet all the drivers who had competed and generally enjoy the atmosphere and surroundings of Cardiff Castle and it was fantastic that as a business Sixt had been part of the success of the event”

World champion Sebastian Loeb regained his title despite crashing out of the event after a crash with a spectator who was driving on the wrong side of the road, Finlands’s Mikko Hirvonen also crashed out of the event, ending his attempt to take the World Rally championship title.

Finland’s Jari-Matti Latvala and co-driver Mikka Anttila in their Ford Fiesta WRC won the rally, 3min 42.9 seconds ahead of Norway’s Mads Ostberg. The Finn held onto his overnight lead throughout all of Sunday’s six special stages and was credited with fastest times on the eleven of the twenty-three stages. Norwegian Mads Ostberg and Swedish co-driver, Jonas Andersson moved into second place as a result of Loeb’s retirement and held this position throughout the remaining five stages. Ostberg said at the end of the final stage, “I am so happy because this is my first podium since Sweden but it feels so different. I had to improve my performance on gravel to get this result.”

sebastian loeb 2011 world champion

Fellow Norwegian, Henning Solberg, and Austrian co-driver, Ilka Minor, winner of the 2011 Michael Park Trophy, finished in third place overall in their Ford Fiesta RS WRC giving Ford a clean sweep of the podium. Wales Rally GB, one of Wales’ long standing flagship events, has been exclusively hosted in the country since 2000. Over the past decade, the rally has evolved and has this year visited a far greater proportion of Wales than ever before.

As this year’s Wales Rally GB – the final and deciding round of the 2011 FIA World Rally Championship draws to a close, Business Minister, Edwina Hart has announced a funding package of £1.4 million for the 2012 event

Links

http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/news/uk-wales-15711569

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Our Sixt Cardiff car hire branch earnt some great publicity last weekend after sponsporing local racer Josh Jone’s Honda bike in the GP400 motorcycle racing championship held at Aberdare Park.

The bike started in its first practice a little shaky but went well enough to qualify for a 4th place grid start, averaging an initial practice speed of 69.83 mph lapping out at 46.4 seconds per mile. The first race saw  the bike leave the grid in a crowd of bikes and thunder to a 6th place finish with an increase of average speed now standing at 71.52 mph lapping out at 45.29 seconds per mile, a lovely start for the bike.

Sunday however was a little different we suffered a humiliating heat. After complaining of a really big flat spot at 25/50% throttle it was confirmed that the fault was a sparkplug so a new set was put into the bike.  This now meant that we were unable to get the flying start we had so much hoped for, we were placed on the back of the grid. The flag dropped the bikes went off into the distance and the VFR launched its way through the back markers to finish in a very respectful 7th place and again the average speed per lap was raised to 72.35 mph lapping out at 44.79 seconds per mile.

Every practice heat and race the bike got better and better. It was also featured in the parade and Josh has now been asked by the paddock scouts to enter it in the formula 400, this weekend, at three sisters race track in Preston. We were all very proud of the results for a first run and its been commented that Josh is very much at home and at ease with the bike.

Finally, and as a bit of a shock, came the best news of all. The bike entered the technical officers bay and was delayed for inspection by about 30 mins, noone seemed to know why but at the presentation of Saturday nights results Josh was awarded for having the best presented and prepared bike of the meeting.

You can see some great photos of the race and Josh’s Sixt bike on the Aberdare Park 2011 slideshow.

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Michael Schumacher puts the Mercedes through its paces

February is a busy month on the Formula 1 calendar, even if the teams are not due to race until they line up on the grid at Bahrain on the 14th of March, finally the teams bring out their latest designs for 4 sessions of testing. This week teams including Ferrari, McLaren and the team formerly known as Brawn GP, Mercedes, have been putting both their new cars and drivers through their paces on the Valencia circuit with Ferrari setting the pace over the 3 days of practice.

Both Felippe Massa and Fernando Alonso topped the leaderboards during the sessions in some cases being more than 1 second ahead of their rivals, although at the moment this could be due to varying fuel amounts in the cars and other drivers testing reliability more than outright speed round the circuit.

Michael Schumacher showed his amazing talent has not been dulled in his absence away from the sport by outpacing his younger team-mate, Nico Rosberg, to finish as one of the quickest drivers of the testing sessions. The 7 time world champion showed the younger drivers that he can still get in a car and be on pace within only a few laps of leaving the pits and managed to put in a total of just 40 laps on his first day back.

Fernando Alonso set the fatest time whilst testing the new Ferrari

Barrichello appreciated that his comments could be taken the wrong way and distorted in the media but after seeing the pace of Schumacher on his first day he hoped his words serve as a warning to the former world champion’s team-mate, “He [Nico] is a great talent and I wish him all the best, and maybe tomorrow you will see the newspapers saying, ‘Rubens tells Nico to get out of there’, but I am not being bad about it,” the Brazilian added. “I wish him all the best because I think he is a talented boy who can be world champion. If he has the chances of being world champion in the same team as Michael, then he can be world champion anywhere. Let’s put it this way.”

The teams will resume testing again next week when they hit the Jerez circuit in Southern Spain near to Cadiz for 4 days starting on the 10^th of February.

In other news from the sport, the FIA is currently looking at adjusting the point system from the originally revised numbers that had been brought in to compensate for the increased number of teams this year. The original decision to adopt a system more in line with the MotoGP racers is still going ahead as planned but there has been an adjustment to some of the points given out for certain places as shown in the table below.

The change in points is intended to reward drivers for winning races rather than the last few seasons where the difference between first and second was only 2 points, although this has led to some of the closest finishes in the championship many commentors feel that it was easily possible for a driver to win the championship without finishing first in any of the races.

The final update to the regulations, like the new revised points system is also pending review, is for drivers who make it through to the 3rd stage of qualifying to use the same tyres when they start the race. This should lead to a more tactical selection as people try to decide whether to go for soft tyres to get position on the grid or for harder compound tyres so that they can run longer into the race before need a new set.

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While white van men have long been seen as the most incompetent and infuriating motorists on the road, it seems that there are some new kids in town.

A study by YouGov for Admiral has found that boy and girl racers are the drivers that are the worst users of London car hire may be interested to hear.

It found that 72 per cent of respondents thought this was the case.

Elderly drivers were next, taking 56 per cent, while white van men had to settle for third, with 48 per cent, it may interest users of van hire to learn.

Sue Longthorn, managing director for Admiral, commented: “It looks like the white van man stereotype as the nation’s most disliked driver isn’t merited anymore and needs revisiting.”

In other motoring news, residents of an estate in Devon have drawn up a petition to stop learners using their roads, with the locals saying that more than 100 driving schools do so.

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