Raoul Fesquet and Yorick Muller, in the Tesla Model 3 bearing the Tesla Owner Club colours and race number 37, have joined the list of regularity stage winners in this 7th E-Rallye Monte-Carlo. That makes 2 victories for the American brand this year, after Wednesday’s SR3, against 3 for Volkswagen, all won by members of the Belgian VW Club. But it was not all plain sailing, because as in most of previous stages, the gaps were narrow… and the Belgians were in the thick of the fight. In this RS10, between Conségudes and Bouyon (13.385 km), the two Frenchmen beat Jean-François Devillers and Eric Chapa, two Belgians in a VW ID4 GTX, by just ten points, and 3rd place was shared equally between three cars with similar performances: the Hyundai Kona of Czechs Michal Zdarsky and Jakub Nabelek, leaders of the Bridgestone ecoRally Cup 2023 after the first seven rounds; the VW ID4 of Antoine Dechamps and Didier Noirhomme, entered by the… Belgian VW Club; and the Nissan Ariya of Jérôme Aymard and Christophe Marques, in the colours of the eBorn recharging network, once again at the front.
Conde ahead of Malga again
Finally, to complete the picture of this truncated 3nd day, it should be added that Spaniards Eneko Conde and Lukas Sergnese (Kia E-Niro), winners of last year’s FIA ecoRally Cup, took 6th place in this RS10, which enabled them to take back the lead of the rally from Malga-Bonnel (Tesla). The provisional Top 5 is completed, before the last day, by three remarkable crews : Delvaux-Piret (Peugeot E-208), in 3rd, Aymard-Marques (Nissan Ariya), in 4th and Heine-Piette (VW ID3) in 5th. Next comes Saturday, with the two last legs (one in Italy) and five last regularity stages (RS11 to RS15) to conclude this 7thedition.
Download the classification of the RS10