Alpine scores its eighth consecutive FIA RGT Cup victory to extend its incredible undefeated run that began at the ACI Rally Monza in 2020.
FIA RGT winner at Rally Islas Canarias, Manu Guigou returns to the top of the general classification on level points with Raphaël Astier, who also campaigns an Alpine.
The Alpine Ambassador's A110 Rally joined the best four-wheel drive cars in the event, finishing seventh overall.
After kicking off the season with a sweep of the podium at the Monte Carlo Rally, Alpine returned to the FIA RGT Cup in the Canary Islands for round two of the season.
Already on top in the Principality, the A110 Rallys of Raphaël Astier and Manu Guigou continued their domination. Beaten by his rival in January, Manu Guigou set the tone from the start, setting the best time in FIA RGT and finishing in the overall top ten on the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria super-stage contested Thursday evening.
Manu Guigou began the first full day of competition with a 0.6s lead and then repeated the feat in SS2 to extend his advantage to 2.1 seconds before Raphaël Astier made a mistake and got the wheels of his car stuck under a guard rail.
Meanwhile, Manu Guigou kept pushing to mix it up with the FIA European Rally Championship protagonists entered with four-wheel drive Rally2 cars. The Alpine Ambassador set a remarkable sixth fastest time on SS4 and continued to dominate his category, finishing the first leg of the rally just outside the overall top ten.
On Saturday, Manu Guigou once again highlighted all the virtues of the Alpine A110 Rally by winning four more stages against two for Raphaël Astier, back in the stages after his retirement. The Code Racing Development driver avoided the hazards of the course on the final loop to seal his first win of the year with a 50:05.3s advantage over his countryman.
This victory, his fourth with Alpine and the eighth in a row for the Signatech-designed model in the FIA RGT Cup, puts Manu Guigou level on points with Raphaël Astier at the top of the general classification. The rest of the general classification remains dominated by the Alpine A110 Rallys, which monopolise the provisional podium ahead of the next round of the season at Rally di Roma Capitale (23-24 July).
Manu Guigou
"It is mission accomplished with this victory and seventh-place finish overall thanks to seven top-ten finishes in thirteen stages. I am incredibly pleased with the Alpine A110 Rally's performance, which was, yet again, flawless thanks to the precision of the chassis. It is also very satisfying to win with Kévin Bronner and Code Racing Development in our second rally together. We have been able to adapt the setup to make the Alpine even more enjoyable to drive. We could see that the gap was minimal between our car and the best competitors in the FIA European Rally Championship. We only lost ten seconds on the 28 kilometres of the rally's longest stage. That's less than half a second per kilometre and it once again underlines the incredible potential of the A110 Rally. Despite my lead in RGT, I also wanted to show that the Alpine is particularly fast on this type of roads, and I think we did that. I had a lot of fun in the Canary Islands, where I had the chance to meet many motorsport enthusiasts. The large crowd loved seeing the Alpine A110 Rally, and the fans were impressed by the car, its design and its speed!"
2022 FIA RGT Cup
1. Raphaël Astier & Manu Guigou 43 points
3. François Delecour 15 points
4. Christophe Casanova 12 points
5. Martin Rada 10 points
6. Roberto Gobbin 8 points
7. Ian Crerar 6 points
Photo © Sven Kollus
