Marc Coma wins second stage of the Tunisia Rally

Marc Coma and his team-mate Gerard Farres. © Repsol Media Service. After crossing the Mediterranean, the participants of the Tunisia Rally have raced this morning the second leg of the 2007 edition that served as a first contact with the African continent, allowing to break the traditional transition leg to the south of the country, where the rest of the rally will be staged. It’s been again a short, 26-kilometres special, which cannot really be taken as an example for the legs to come. It was a rather enduro-like stage on not very fast tracks which were quite broken due to the rain of the past months. Then participants had to cover a liaison of almost 400 kilometres to Douz, starting point of tomorrow’s leg. In any case, navigation became more important today and there were more changes of direction than yesterday in Corsica.

Under these conditions, Marc Coma managed to set the fastest time today, covering the special in only twenty-one minutes, half a minute quicker than Gerard Farrés, who was third fastest behind Frenchman Souvignet. The first complications will show-up tomorrow and the rally will show participants its real face. The differences between the main riders have had little significance so far. After today’s special, Coma keeps his second place in the overall standings, although only five seconds behind David Casteu, who keeps the leadership. Team-mate Gerard Farrés moved-up one position and is third, one minute and nine seconds behind the leader.

Coma is only five secs. down raid leader. © Repsol Media Service. “Today we had another short transition leg," said Marc Coma. "There was some navigation to do, but not too difficult and everything went fine. It wasn’t a complicated stage and we went most of all through the mountains until the last liaison which was close to the capital of Tunisia. We’ll enter the desert tomorrow and that will be the start of the typical African stages.”

Team-mate Gerard Farres added: "Again a transition leg and every worked out well, no mishaps or problems. The special had only 25 km and easy navigation, so I started calmly to finish the day without making any mistakes. The real rally will start tomorrow, navigation will become more important and the truth is that I’m looking forward for the real race to start in order to learn as much as possible.”

(Repsol Media Service)