Croatia Rally, Saturday the Toughest Day. The Entire Range of Available Tyres Is Likely to Come into Play

Slippery asphalt, often covered in dirt and gravel, high stress for the tyres, which require particularly careful management. These are the main challenges of the Croatia Rally that stand out from the Pirelli engineers’ analysis post-recce.

Main Points:

• The toughest day of the whole rally should be the Saturday. During the 8 special stages the stress on the tyres should be particularly high for this type of asphalt and because of the dirt that tends to accumulate after each run.
• The most critical stages of the whole rally are 1-8 because of the deep ruts and the narrow roads and 9-13.
• On Friday, one will also need to watch out for Platak (SS 4-5) because of high stress and a high risk of failure.
• Sunday should be more straightforward, even if it looks like being slippery, with the two sections presenting very different challenges: the first (SS 17-19) is fast, while the second (SS 18-20) features narrow roads

Below are the day-by-day analysis charts.

PIRELLI TYRES IN CROATIA

Pirelli’s asphalt rally tyre is available in two compounds. For Croatia, the prime will be the hard compound (P Zero RA WRC HA) which is best suited to tackling the more abrasive road surfaces and the longer stages, while the soft compound (P Zero RA WRC SA) will be the option, preferred when the asphalt is more slippery or damp because of rain or overnight frost.

P Zero RA: is the product specific to Rally2 and Rally3 cars, used therefore in WRC2, WRC3 and Junior WRC. In this case too, crews can choose from the hard compound (RA5A) which made its debut last autumn in the Spanish Rally, which here in Croatia is the prime and the soft compound (RA7+). The P Zero RA tyres share several characteristics with the WRC tyres fitted to the top tier cars

For the Rally2 cars, Croatia hosts the maiden outing for the new soft tyre the RA7+C, which delivers improved performance on slippery surfaces presenting a mix of damp and dry conditions. The RA7+A has similar characteristics and this new soft tyre is also making its outright debut on the roads of Croatia, developed for the Rally3 cars.

Cinturato RW: all the four-wheel drive categories have available a rain tyre aimed at wet or very damp asphalt. The Cinturato WRC RWB was developed specifically for Rally1 cars. Rally2 have the new RWC, while Rally3 cars will use the CInturato RW1C.