Rally Adriatico 2003
The Rally Adriatico, last round of the Italian Rally Championship, run during the last weekend, was very thrilling and exciting in the opinion of anybody. Nobody remembered such appealing rally in the national rally series in the last decade. The final round started with three drivers at maximum attack for the Italian drivers crown, whilst the constructors title has been already won by Fiat at the previous rally, the upcoming WRC 2004 event Rally Costa Smeralda.
Most chances were for Giandomenico Basso, at the wheel of Trico Motor Sport's Fiat Punto, although the Treviso-based driver was at his first experience of Rally of Adriatico, the gravel event programmed for October 18th 2003. Remaining chances were for Paolo Andreucci, with Procar's Fiat Punto and for Piero Longhi with Aimont Racing's Subaru Impreza, who had only some mathematical probability to hook up the Fiat drivers in the final leaderboard. Andreucci was only 8 points behind Basso, but Longhi was 19 points behind and with the rule of 20 points to the round winner, he had to win to the event and hoping the retirement of the other challengers.
On Saturday 18th, the crews abandoned the start line in Marche's capitol moving to the raining hinterland between Pesaro and Ancona, with few amounts of supporters along the twisty tracks going up and down in that beautiful region. All the stages resembled Tutta Terra Toscana, with similar weather conditions and ground consistency, with levigated straight lines where the cars were easlity able to reach 170 km/h.
Piero Longhi sang the right scratch times in the first stages and gets earlier the first position in the provisional scoreboard, with Luca Cantamessa as strong outsider at not more than 20 seconds with Mitsubishi Lancer Evo VII brought by Gass Racing. The Super1600 crews were very far in the list after the first trip of four stages, with Paolo Andreucci still dominating just ahead of Basso and Travaglia: all of them were penalized by the low grip of the front wheel cars, versus the well-performing Nippon Imprezas and Lancers.
The first stop at parc ferme let several team managers looking at the projections in the championship classifications and making up their minds about the strategy for the second round-trip of stages: Longhi was dominating, but he was not able to gain so many points over the Fiat drivers and the championship title was going to be a matter between Andreucci and Basso.
That scenery forced Giandomenico Basso to hit the attack to the Procar driver from SS5 to stage SS8 in order to defend the 8 points advantage in the championship, and the Italian fastest pizzaiolo succeeded in the almost all stages, overtaking Andreucci after SS7. It was on the stage 8, where Basso, while keeping on a furious pace, went off road with his Fiat Punto rolling so many times on the nearby ground: the crew was able to gain the track again, but the driver took the wrong direction and run for about 300 meters, when he encountered the following car, namely Paolo Andreucci and Anna Andreussi's Fiat Punto. Both the crews were able to avoid the tragical crash with evident panic for all of them, whilst Basso understood the right direction and completed the stage with a delay of +2'33" over the Tuscan driver.
The car suffered such a big hit, so that Trico Motor Sport men became for 20 minutes true bodymakers instead of mechanics and were able to reshape again the back of the yellow Fiat Punto. That great assistance let Basso to go on fighting for the title, but he was aware to run sub-judice, because of the irregular manouvre during stage 8.
In the meanwhile Longhi's Subaru Impreza retired on SS5 for turbocharger failure and most of other Production car drivers retired on the last stage, going off road for some rocks put by unreasonable people, who don't like rallies and prefers crashes and death. Fiorio and Cantamessa retired for such cause, but other drivers claimed they risked too much when crossing over those stones.
The event ended with the victory of Andrea Navarra, running with a Subaru Impreza WRC, which was however transparent for the Italian Championship, while Paolo Andreucci was able with a Super1600 car to win a gravel event of the Italian series and the maximum amount of points needed to overtake Basso and get the Italian championship title.
Paolo Andreucci, after the Italian Rally Championship title in 2001, and the Super1600 Championship title in 2002, repeats successfully the Italian series with three victories, Targa Florio, Rally San Martino di Castrozza, and Rally Adriatico. Prodigious efforts were put by Procar men, who managed a Fiat Punto rented by N Technology, and gave Paolo Andreucci a superior car, which showed solid performance and reliability in all the rounds with any condition.
Anybody however agreed that the moral Italian rally champion was Giandomenico Basso, because he outperformed any expectation driving a Fiat Punto with fewer upgrades, but acquired a lot of experience he could maximize during the next year again on a official Fiat car.
