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Lukyanuk plays the long game in ERC duel

Alexey Lukyanuk is not overly worried that being forced to miss the Circuit of Ireland will hinder his FIA European Rally Championship title bid against Kajetan Kajetanowicz.

After his win on the season-opening Rally Islas Canarias El Corte Inglés, Lukyanuk led the defending champion Kajetanowicz in the standings, but lost that initiative when a pre-event test prevented him from starting in Northern Ireland.

Now, as he returns to action on the SEAJETS Acropolis Rally, Lukyanuk says beating his rival won't be easy, but with eight events remaining in 2016 and only the seven best scores counting towards the standings, he's not concerned.

"OK, he's European Rally Champion, so it's not so easy to apply pressure to him and to keep him behind," said the Russian. "He's quite consistent on each surface and OK, we will do our best, but at the moment the situation is not that bad because to be honest in Ireland it was not an easy rally for me to achieve a good result and score a lot of points.

"We have seven rallies to be scored for the championship so we can miss a few events and still be in the fight. Of course if you get points on each rally it's good but we're going to see what happens through the year."

Zdroj: fiaerc.com