Rally’s hottest property, Pierre Campana, is set for his second World Rally Championship event of the year at this weekend’s Rallye de France – Alsace.
The event, taking place on French ground, has extra meaning for Campana, following his appointment earlier this year as the French Motorsport Federation’s (FFSA) lead driver for Rally Team France 2011, following in the footsteps of greats such as Sébastien Loeb and Sébastien Ogier.
Campana has already taken part in one of this season’s WRC events under the FFSA Rally Team France banner, driving a MINI John Cooper Works WRC car run by the Drive-Pro team, led by François Padrona.
It has been a busy and productive few months for Campana and his long-term co-driver Sabrina de Castelli, as they embarked on a steep learning curve to become acquainted with the competitive MINI. Their adaptation has been generally very positive with two victories in their first three outings after winning the Richard Burns Memorial in the UK and then winning in the Mont Blanc-Morzine rally earlier in September.
As part of his FFSA programme, Pierre has taken part in Rally Germany, in which he finished a highly respectable 18th place, but he hopes to use his active rally programme over the last few months to impress around the 23 stage, 348.13km Rallye de France-Alsace course.
Rallye de France has been part of the WRC schedule since 1973 but last year’s event was the first time that the event used a totally new course in the Alsace region. Further changes have been made for this year’s event with the first two stages on the opening day run in an opposite direction with the Pays d’Ormont stage extended to 36 kilometres in length. Saturday includes a new remote service halt in Colmar and a special stage through the streets of Mulhouse. There are two new stages on Sunday, Graviere de Bischwiller and Vignoble de Cleebourg, while Haguenau hosts the event-closing Power Stage.
Pierre Campana: “I am thrilled and excited to be taking part in this weekend’s Rallye de France-Alsace and I have to thank the FFSA, and Team Drive-Pro, for giving me this fantastic opportunity to rally on French ground. Sabrina and I have built up a wealth of experience and knowledge since our first competitive event with the MINI John Cooper Works WRC at the Richard Burns Memorial. We had a solid debut in WRC in Germany and I was pleased with what we achieved. The victory in the French Rally Championship round at Mont Blanc Morzine showed us that we have made a lot of very positive progress with the car and as a team, so I think we are in excellent shape moving to Rallye de France-Alsace. We will maintain our usual approach of taking each stage as it comes, since this will be another new experience for us, but we will push to extract the most out of ourselves and the car. Finishing the rally will again be an important objective but we have lots of experience to draw upon now, which will hopefully make a big difference.”
Nicolas Deschaux, President of the FFSA: "The FFSA has long set itself the challenge of guaranteeing conditions and creating the necessary environment for our most promising hopes to attain the highest stage of their discipline, and we still continue today with the same determination. Following Sébastien Ogier in 2009, the steering committee members are, together with myself, happy to entrust Pierre Campana with the colours of Rally Team France this year. We believe that this young, talent and committed driver will give his all to seize the opportunity that the FFSA has offered him.”