ERC Roma Di Capitale - Nikolay Gryazin - the fast and the unlucky

23.07.2019

Nikolay Gryazin and Yaroslav Fedorov ended their first of two scheduled starts in the 2019 European Rally Championship with bitter retirement.

Rally di Roma Capitale has become the first return to ERC since 2018 for SRT crew. Showing speed and checking settings before the German round of the WRC was the main task during this asphalt race.

Nikolay won the SS1 of the rally and took the lead. He was 1.4 seconds ahead of the closest runner up. Unfortunately, our guys went off the road and crashed into a tree on the SS2. The crew wasn't injured in the accident; however, the blow was strong enough to damage the roll cage so the crew couldn't start the second day by Rally 2.

Nikolay Gryazin

Driver

"Unfortunately, the race ended for us too early. I made a mistake on braking, was too fast and overestimated tire capacity. I thought I could stop at such distance, but as a result, I slipped and crashed into a tree.

We are disappointed for not driving the entire rally distance, for letting down the SRT team that we had to help in a fight for the championship and the fans that we wanted to please with a spectacular driving. The SS1 showed that we can compete with local drivers in terms of speed and the Italians are always very fast on asphalt, especially at home, and this is very disappointing. Two special stages are too few to talk about at least some of the tasks fulfilled.

Particularly, I would like to say that we were glad to come back to the ERC and its friendly atmosphere. We have lots of friends and acquaintances here whom we missed. We also thank Eurosport Events again and again for organizing the series which gave us essential experience due to which we show decent results from the first year in the WRC.

Of course, Rally di Roma Capitale – an event that we always liked – was unsuccessful for us, but we can do nothing with this fact: this is a sport, this is also experience, and this is the risk we are ready to take when it comes to "training" rallies. We have no right to go with such risk at the WRC round – in that case, you work towards the result there, and you drive more safely. Now we need to think about starting in Finland".

Nikolay Gryazin and Yaroslav Fedorov will come back to the World Rally Championship in 2 weeks. Our crew will take part in Rally Finland from 1-4 August. This performance, as well as all others, will be covered in detail on the official website and in the Telegram channel. 

For more info visit www.nikolay-gryazin.com