Lukyanuk’s heroic performance on Rally Liepāja-Ventspils, where he was battling for third place against François Delecour in a Super 2000-specification Peugeot 207, earned him the accolade ahead of impressive two-wheel-drive runner Stéphane Lefebvre (Peugeot 208 R2).
“It’s always difficult to choose the winner but our attention was focused on a young French driver Stéphane Lefebvre, who was driving on snow and ice for the first time and was leading the ERC 2WD Championship, and Alexey Lukyanuk, who was able to fight in the top three in a Group N car. But in the end we decided the winner should be Alexey Lukyanuk,” said ERC General Co-ordinator Jean-Pierre Nicolas, who along with Eurosport’s Gilbert Roy and Colin’s father Jimmy McRae forms the judging panel.
After accepting his award from Nicolas, Russian Lukyanuk said: “It’s a great honour for me to have this award, I did not expect it. Before I watched other drivers win it [when it was in the IRC] and now I have managed to do this makes me so happy. It’s a real achievement.”
Lukyanuk, who pilots a Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X, is trying to tackle more rounds of the ERC in the future.