Date: 14 August 2006

Athanassoulas claims first FSTi win.

Greek driver Lambros Athanassoulas claimed his first win in the Fiesta SportingTrophy International (FSTi) series, as well as winning the N3 Class overall after three hard days on OMV ADAC Rallye Deutschland, taking the win by 21.6 seconds from championship and early rally leader Alessandro Bettega. Athanassoulas stuck to his game plan throughout the event in his RMS run Fiesta to win the fourth round of the one make series which runs alongside selected rounds of the FIA Junior World Rally Championship The Greek driver, codriven by Nikos Mouzakis, had entered the event determined to drive at his own pace and the Jet Oils backed Ford Hellas car set several fastest stage times on his way to the win. Leading at the end of leg 2 the final day he had to push really hard on stages 17 and 18 to try and maintain the gap to Bettega. The choice of a cut slick had given him the edge on SS17 but the last stage was wet for the repeat of Freisen/Westrich yet in the end he only dropped 4.6 seconds to Bettega who had picked intermediate tyres on his car.

Bettega had led for most of the first two days of the event but a power steering pipe coming loose on Saturday afternoon followed by a broken waterpump belt meant that the Italian suffered penalties which lost his top spot. Despite losing a potential win, the Italian remains strongly placed at the head of the championship table after what were his first real mechanical problems of the season.

Third place in this tightly contested series was decided by only 0.8 seconds on the final stage times. Scot Barry Clark damaged his engine mount late on the morning's opening stage, dropping over a minute in the whole loop of stages. Mathieu Biasion claimed his first stage win of the weekend in his bid to overtake Clark and only missed out by the narrowest of margins but then on the road section back to the Finish Ceremony in Trier the Fiesta's engine expired.

Useful links:
www.fiestasportingtrophy.com
www.athanassoulas.gr