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ERC Junior points please Swedish federation-backed Adielsson

Mattias Adielsson scored what could turn out to be 16 crucial points in his bid to win the FIA ERC1 Junior Championship.

The Sweden National Team driver endured a tough debut in the category for young stars in R5 cars, retiring with an electrical issue at the end of leg one, before fighting back to bring his Citroën C3 R5 home in fourth position in class.

“Of course a fourth place after the retirement on the first day when we lost 10 minutes we are happy,” said Adielsson. “We are also really happy to get the fourth place points and we continue to aim for championship. We are doing the whole championship so of course all the points we can get are important, it’s certainly better than a retirement.

Of his Azores Rallye bid, Adielsson said: “It was not the start we wanted but the team changed every part of the car that was electric, they did an amazing job.

“We worked a lot on the set-up of the car, trying to learn, learn, learn because that’s why we are here. We made a big step forward with that and to be third overall on the second superspecial was a really big step forward because we were 20s off the pace on day one. We still have some things to figure but when the feeling was good I could be flat out.”

Adielsson came close to retiring the final stage following an off but emergency repairs by he and co-driver Andreas Johansson got the Saintéloc-run pair to the finish in Ponta Delgada.

“We had some small mistakes and I was struggling with the braking points,” Adielsson said. “In the last stage we knocked the exhaust. It was a small impact but we managed with a screwdriver to open it out so we could have the power to continue the stage.”

Zdroj: fiaerc.com