Argentinian Championship

[Damian Baldi]

Well deserved victory for Juan Marchetto with Skoda. This man had to left competition 10 years ago to take treatment against cancer and have made a great work with just a few runs of practice.

The rally was in part defined by a very hard first SS of saturday and sunday that made some drivers lose a lot of time with punctures, broken rims and fogged glass after crossing some fords.








The RC2A class (R5 cars) have had a field with missing drivers because the frontiers are closed. The entire Point Cola Racing team couldn't take part of the event with their two Hyundais, leaving aside Martin Scuncio and Miguel Baldoni. Championship leader Martinez couldn't take part for he same reason as Dennis Romero who have their brand new Skoda waiting but neither could arrive.

Meanwhile Marcos Ligato made the debut of the Citröen C3, and Juan Alonso who moved from Skoda took part with his Ford Fiesta. There was no R4 cars this time, Javier Castro is moving to US and Alvarez was at Europe for a raid race.

Marchetto did no mistakes, he won several SS even using very simplified notes becasuse he said there were too much to do and he didn't want to pay too much attention to the notes.

Cancio suffered two punctures of the same wheel on the same SS (saturday and sunday). That made him lost an entire minute difficult to recover. Same for Ligato who suffered with fogged glass and later admited that he didn't made the procedure right. Alonso was doing what he could on his first race with this car. The team had to work without an engineer and that made everything more difficult.

However, on saturday Marchetto won four SS, Ligato three and Cancio one. Sadly Ligato have overturn the car at the very last SS of the saturday loosing only 6 seconds, but damaging some parts of the car that the team didn't have spares, so his race ended there.


Something similar happened on the RC2B class (Maxi Rally cars) on that tough first SS shaking the race's positions. Padilla with the Polo had a strong morning, while Villagra (Yaris) and Díaz (Fiesta) losed time with a punctures and fogged glass.

On saturday afternoon Padilla suffered with a transmsion problems losing all the advantage he had. On Sunday morning after the tough first SS Díaz become the leader, with Villagra second, Pasten third with a Polo and Padilla fourd. The rest of the race was a close fight between Díaz and Villagra with both taking the lead SS after SS, but at the end Díaz won by almost ten seconds and even won two overal SS. Pasten got a penalty for delay on the asistance and Padilla finally took 3rd place.

It was a good weekend in middle of a very rare situation with the pandemic. The streaming coverage was really good to be the first time, there are some things to sort out off course, but from nothing to this, is like day and night.

Summary of day 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIqn0rk20ZU

Summary of day 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuDB2abUU64

Some colour notes. Many drivers and co-drivers took part in this event, because the official ones are stranded in Europe. Hernan Kim that usually drives his Ford Fiesta MR on the carx championship, took part in the event with one of the three Villagra brothers as co-driver. He wasn't fast on saturday, but on sunday their times were very competitive. Marcos Ligato had Diego Levy as co-driverd. Many drivers as the winner of the RC2N Gonzalo Monarca (EVO X) took part of the rally as a one off.

Another video from the point of view of a spectator, no music
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRinJcjaiMs