The highly competitive Rally di Roma Capitale was won by the duo of Roberto Daprà and Luca Guglielmetti in a Škoda Fabia RS Rally2 from the Delta Rally team. It was their first victory in the ERC. Behind them, crews driving Škoda cars took the entire podium, having battled for those positions right up until the final special stage.
On the winding roads northeast of Rome—a largely unfamiliar environment for most drivers—the standings shifted frequently at the start of the third round of this year’s ERC championship. This was due to a combination of driving errors, technical issues, and changes in the pace of individual drivers.
However, from the very start Roberto Daprà established himself among the fastest drivers, eventually jumping to the top of the overall standings during the penultimate special stage on Saturday. By the end of the most demanding day of the race, he held a lead of just over 20 seconds.
Going into the final four stages on Sunday, Daprà was by no means assured of victory but the competitors behind him were focused more on battling each other than on chasing him. Behind the Italian driver, drivers in Škoda Fabia RS Rally2 cars—Teemu Suninen, Boštjan Avbelj, and Giandomenico Basso—were fighting for the remaining spots on the podium.
In Sunday’s opening special stage Daprà pushed hard just to be safe and increased his lead to 25 seconds; he then drove the last three stages at a more relaxed pace, maintaining his lead. “The narrow section was really treacherous; we bent a rim this morning, so I was a little worried about punctures,” Daprà explained at the finish line, noting that Sunday’s leg of the competition was stressful and that victory was by no means a sure thing until the very last moment. “Crazy, crazy—we’re so happy,” he beamed on the finish ramp.
The driver standings for the next three positions behind him also remained unchanged from the end of Saturday’s competition. However, that certainly doesn’t mean Sunday’s program and the battle among the Škoda drivers weren’t dramatic. On the contrary, Suninen, Avbelj, and Basso put on a truly nail-biting showdown.
First, in the opening two stages Basso made a push and closed the gap on Suninen to just under 7 seconds but then Avbelj stepped up his pace and, in the penultimate special stage, pushed Basso down to fourth place. When the duo of Boštjan Avbelj and Elia De Guio went on to win the final super special stage as well, the pair of Teemu Suninen and Antti Haapala nearly lost their second-place finish. In the end, the Finnish crew battling their Italian rivals held on to second place by a mere half-second. Basso then missed the podium by just 3.2 seconds.
Both Suninen and Basso had extra motivation compared to their rivals. As the race drew to a close, they knew a good result could propel them to the top of the ERC championship standings. In the end, it was Suninen who took the lead, three points ahead of Basso.
In addition to the quartet of Daprà, Suninen, Avbelj, and Basso, two other drivers in Škoda cars scored points at the Rally di Roma Capitale. The Swedish crew of Mille Johansson and Johan Grönvall took sixth place and the defending European champions, Miko Marczyk and Szymon Gospodarczyk of Poland finished tenth. The European Championship will head to Poland in July.
