Autosportfoto

Rally: San Martino di Castrozza - His opponent suffers sabotage and he hands back the title

Story of a "half" victory that the true sportsman returns to the sender. It is the story of a rally, of a  fair play gesture, and a double finale. One archived on a report, one yet to be written. There are three actors in the beau geste: the team principal of the United Business Sports & Events (Italy), Pier Liberali, and the two crew members, Alessandro Perico and Fabrizio Carrara who have won the Italian Cup for Privateer Crews, after last weekend's event, the Rally Internazionale San Martino di Castrozza. We could call it the rally of teasing as two different acts of vandalism, well prepared, have excluded both Matteo Gamba and Umberto Scandola from the race for the title; Gamba found the ECU wiring on his Peugeot severed. Scandola, of the Skoda team, was instead treated with spikes thrown on the track. Anger and disappointment. It is easy to imagine the anger and disappointment of Gamba and his team, Balbosca, but against the rightful recriminations came, surprisingly, the response of United Business Sports & Events.

"Fair play must prevail beyond everything- said Pier Liberali - and my team has always taken pride of this". So Perico, along with his codriver Carrara, has sent a letter to the Csai (Italian Motorsport Federation) , renouncing the title and requesting that this be awarded to the crew of Gamba-Inglesi as an act of solidarity for the damages and for the "unfair and despicable act."