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Catie gets ERC Junior Under 27 campaign off to a strong start

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Catie gets ERC Junior Under 27 campaign off to a strong start

Catie Munnings got her FIA European Rally Championship Junior Under 27 campaign off to a strong start by finishing fifth on Rally Azores in a Saintéloc Junior Team Peugeot 208 R2.

On one of the trickiest rounds of the series, Catie and German co-driver Anne Katharina Stein made sure they didn’t repeat last year’s early exit with a controlled drive over the gravel stages to gain valuable ERC experience. Reaching the finish was their main aim, although they were pushing on – as a spin and several hairy moments proved. They eventually achieved exactly what they set out to do, reaching the end of a very tough event on the island of São Miguel in the mid-Atlantic Ocean.

“It was an incredible rally and I’m really happy to be at the finish,” said Catie. “I know I can do a lot better and push a lot harder but I kept a level head to get here and big thanks to the team who worked really hard to get me here.

“Friday was a complicated day but I was always expecting that. It’s a completely different style of rallying in the Azores, it’s blown my mind. My goal was always to finish this rally because I went out so early last year. If you don’t count last year, this was only my second rally on gravel. It’s a tough one to learn but it’s important to take all the kilometres that I can. We had to keep a sensible head.

“It was very foggy on Saturday morning and very slippery so we just took that easy because I have no experience of those stages and the day was probably the trickiest day for me personally. I was still trying to get a good feeling with the car. I was not very confident on the fast sections, it felt like it was moving a lot. I’m trying to lean on the experience of my engineers or the other guys in my team to figure out if it’s me and just getting used to the surface or if there is something I can do to change the car.

“In the first stage on Saturday we spun and got stuck in a really narrow section so we were doing a 25-point turn to try to get out of it which wasn’t ideal. We were just making sure of every corner and even like that it was very easy to have hairy moments, very sideways and very slippery, not a constant grip at all. We were down to 2.4s a kilometre which is cool for us especially on gravel because we have no experience. I think sometimes I forget I really haven’t got much experience on gravel and it’s tough when you come up against other guys who are on gravel all the time but it’s the best place to learn.”

Catie wears a Stilo WRC DES 8860 supplied by Nicky Grist Motorsports.