Bryan Bouffier has spun on stage six of Rally Rzeszow, costing him 20 seconds to rival Kajetan Kajetanowicz in their fight for FIA European Rally Championship victory.
Bouffier had only just lost the lead prior to the second run through the Lubenia test when Kajetanowicz had time awarded back to him after his SS2 hold up. The spin meant the Frenchman was 20.1s slower than the reigning ERC champion, leaving him 25.4s behind overall with one stage remaining on Friday.
Bouffier said: “It’s a shame, it was my fault. On a junction, it was dusty, I started to oversteer and I couldn’t avoid it. I had to stop the engine and restart.”
While Bouffier remains second, there has changes further down the order. Filip Nivette outpaced Tomasz Kasperczyk by 3.9s, putting him 1.5s ahead in their battle for fifth.
The low battery that Dávid Botka suffered on his Citroën DS3 R5 on the previous stage appeared to prevent him starting the stage, eliminating the Hungarian from eighth place. That promotes Raul Jeets to ninth and Łukasz Habaj is up to 10th after his time-consuming off on SS2, having been second fastest in SS6.
