MERRITT, B.C. (October 2, 2011) – One Yokohama-sponsored team won the battle and a second won the war as teammates and rivals Patrick Richard and Antoine L’Estage dominated the Pacific Forest Rally here.
The Subaru Rally Team Canada pair of Patrick Richard of Squamish, B.C. and Alan Ockwell of Toronto led most of the two-day event and comfortably won the first rally for their team since the middle of 2010. They had a 48-second margin in hand over the second-place Mitsubishi of Yokohama teammates L’Estage (St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec) and Nathalie Richard (Halifax). Third went to the Subaru of Leo Urlichich of Toronto and Martin Brady of Ireland.
Their second-place finish easily notched a second consecutive Canadian Rally Championship title for L’Estage and Nathalie Richard, with one event still on the 2011 calendar. It is their second championship of the year: The pair secured the 2011 North American Rally Cup honours earlier in the season with four first-place finishes in Canada and two wins and three second-place finishes in the Rally America series in the U.S.
The two top finishers took separate paths to the podium. Reunited with co-driver Ockwell for the first time this season, Pat Richard showed the winning form over the roads of the Pacific Forest route that helped the pair to the Canadian Rally Championship in both 2008 and 2009. Their clean drive, solid reliability and proven team work moved the Subaru squad a step closer to the manufacturer’s title in the Canadian series.
L’Estage and Nathalie Richard, meanwhile, kept their goal of a repeat championship in sight and ran a conservative rally that still took them to second place in the results.
Both teams rely on a selection of highly sophisticated Yokohama competition tires for the gravel roads like those here, and turn to Yokohama’s line of winter tires for the ice and snow conditions of winter rallies – conditions that are frequently found at the final event of the season, Ontario’s Rally of the Tall Pines in November. That event will also decide the manufacturer’s championship within the Canadian Rally Championship, where Mitsubishi has a narrow lead over Subaru.
The six-event Canadian championship has been televised nationally on TSN and RDS since 1993, and is made available on multiple media platforms, including TSN 2, as downloads from iTunes, on-line on Flat Over Crest (www.flatovercrest.com) and to 80 million homes in Europe on MotorsTV.
Yokohama Tire (Canada) Inc. markets and distributes a full line of tires for high performance, passenger car, light truck, and commercial truck applications, as well as off-the-road tires for mining, forestry and construction applications. It maintains distribution centers across Canada to serve more than 700 independent tire dealers and more than 2,000 retail locations.
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