YPRES RALLY SET TO PROVIDE A MASSIVE CHALLENGE FOR PIRELLI'S ERC JUNIOR DRIVERS
27.06.2016
Pirelli is throwing its weight behind the ERC Junior Championship this year – a series designed to promote the rally champions of tomorrow – which reaches its halfway point at the Ypres Rally in Belgium this weekend.
The popular European Rally Championship event is well known for its strong entry list, in-cluding a number of local specialists. Among the challenges that drivers have to overcome are long straights, 90-degree corners, variable weather, and hazards such as ditches and telegraph poles that line the compact route.
Because of the specialised nature of this all-asphalt rally, the regular European Rally Championship competitors often struggle against local expertise. But one man to accept the challenge is fearless Russian Alexey Lukyanuk, who will be relying on Pirelli’s latest P Zero RK tyres to try and reduce the 15-point gap that currently separates him from cham-pionship leader Kajetan Kajetanowicz. The Pole is not contesting the Ypres Rally this weekend, as he is preparing for his home round of the World Rally Championship next weekend.
The route: the rally runs through the famous Flanders region, on the border with France. In total there are 17 asphalt special stages, ranging from 7.48 kilometres to 23.23 kilometres in length (Mesen and Hollebeke respectively).
Driving characteristics: the roads tend to consist of fast straights, interspersed with right-angled corners, and featuring a large number of junctions. This calls for spot-on driving precision and accurate pace notes. With drivers frequently cutting corners, the roads get progressively dirtier with the passage of each car. A lot of the action also takes place at night.
Weather: wet weather is a distinct possibility this weekend, which makes the roads ex-tremely slippery, with minimal grip. Staying on the road is the biggest challenge.
Leading Pirelli drivers in Ypres:
In total there are over 100 starters in Ypres, including more than 35 in the top class. The leading Pirelli runner is Ford Fiesta R5 driver Alexey Lukyanuk on his Ypres Rally debut: the winner of the season-opening Canaries Rally, again on his event debut. Pirelli is exclu-sive supplier to the ERC Junior Championship, providing technical training as well as tyres to the young drivers. The competition in this category is finely balanced, with Opel Adam driver Lukasz Pieniazek having won the first round and Portugal’s Diogo Gago the second in a Peugeot 208 R2. Other championship challengers include Chris Ingram (Opel Adam) and his team mate Marijan Griebel, who knows this event extremely well. Nikolay Gryazin (Peugeot 208) and Julius Tannert (Opel Adam) will also be hoping for a strong Ypres Rally to put themselves back into the title fight.
The tyres and the rules:
In accordance with FIA regulations, the top teams have 18 of the 18-inch tyres at their dis-posal for the entire event, while the Juniors have 12 of the 16-inch tyres at their disposal. Pirelli is bringing the entire P Zero RK range to Ypres, with the medium compound RK7B as the base tyre for dry weather and the RKW7 for wet or damp conditions. The Juniors will use the RK5 for dry conditions and RKW7 in the wet.can teachers sustainably improve the vocational orientation for their pupils by using modern learning techniques, and by col-laborating with local companies? Against the background of this issue Thorsten Wohlgemuth, teacher at the School at the Sports Park in Erbach/Odenwald, developed an ap-proach to teaching and implemented this concept for quite some time now with great suc-cess .
In this school year Pirelli Germany supports him as a project partner: Together with the eighth form of the School at Sportpark/Erbach Thorsten Wohlgemuth visited the plant of the tyre manufacturer in Breuberg .
Following this employees of Pirelli set those pupils a project task. By using construction sets of the brand fischertechnik the teens should recreate industrial robots and pneumati-cal models they had seen at Pirelli. After that they had to match these models in produc-tion processes. The last task was to programme the motors, switches, photoelectric barri-ers and colour sensors by using the visual programming language RoboPro.
In this way, the pupils are supposed to get to know technical professions at an early stage throuh fun and games.
Yersterday, throughout a two-hour event of the Chamber of Industry and Commerce Darmstadt, the pupils presented their models at Pirelli Germany. Many teachers and par-ents appeared and admired the works of the children. In addition, Thorsten Wohlgemuth explained his approach in detail. Subsequently Christian Heckmann and Tilo Schwarz pre-sented the attractive training and study opportunities within the company Pirelli Germany
"We are keen to submit pupils insights into the diverse range of technical professions as early as possible," Josef Lottes, executive director staff and organization at Pirelli Germa-ny, underlines.
Only if they become acquainted with technical professions practically and close at the ac-tion as part of the school curriculum, they will have the chance to expand their horizons and their career prospects accordingly. As a high-tech company it is substantially for Pirelli to look ahead and to provide for the future. As a modern training company we offer many professions in the field of process engineering, mechatronics and engineering. An we are always looking for young talents, of Course. That's why we are pleased to get involved in this exciting project of School at Sportpark.”
(Quelle: Pirelli)
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