Abdulaziz Al-Kuwari survived a last minute scare in his Ford Fiesta RRC to wrap up a convincing win in the WRC 2 category of Rally Argentina.
The Qatari, who took the category lead on stage two, began the final day of competition with a comfortable advantage of 10m30.7sec over the Group N Mitsubishi Lancer of Nicolas Fuchs.
Three consecutive stage wins on Saturday’s first three stages enabled Al-Kuwari and his Irish co-driver Killian Duffy to extend this to 13m19.6s by the end of the penultimate stage.
But all was not well with the handling of the Fiesta, and what Kuwari initially felt was a puncture turned out to be a broken rear cross member.
He gave away some of his advantage with a cautious approach through the rocky repeat of El Condor to take the win from Fuchs by 13m06.9s.
“I’m very happy,” said a relieved Al-Kuwari. “It’s our second WRC 2 win of the year and we are now leading the championships for drivers, teams and co-drivers. I’m looking forward to the next round in Greece.”
Peruvian Fuchs passed Al-Kuwari on the final test to round off his weekend with a stage win. “It’s been a great weekend, we came here looking to win and we’ve taken maximum points in our class,” said Fuchs, who leads the WRC 2 Production Cup by 33 points.
Argentine Marcos Ligato was third in a Subaru Impreza WRX, more than 10 minutes behind Fuchs after his suspension-related retirement on Thursday.
Juan Carlo Alonso was fourth in a Mitsubishi, six minutes further back, with Yuriy Protasov, who retired on Friday’s competition, rounding off the top five.
Ricardo Trivino was sixth, and the only other finisher following Armin Kremer’s retirement at the end of SS12 with broken suspension.