The second stage of the Baja España Aragón again saw a spirited Nani Roma, who finished second in the first special stage of the day, and third in the second, in which he had to ease off the pace due to temperature problems with his Mitsubishi Racing Lancer. Knocked back by a 41 minute penalty, the Repsol driver in the end came back up to seventh position on the leaderboard, in a race which was won by the French driver Stéphane Peterhansel.
The second round of the two special stages which made up the 2010 Baja España Aragón again saw the Mitsubishi Lancer 2.0l Turbo, in Repsol colours, put in a great performance, despite the new car and the few kilometres clocked up by Nani Roma at the steering wheel. The Spanish driver finished second in the first special stage of the day, of 132 kilometres, which he completed just 50 seconds off the time of Stéphane Peterhansel’s BMW.
In the second timed stage, of 177 kilometres, Nani Roma had to slow the pace down due to temperature problems in his car, which had also begun to affect the power of the engine. The Repsol driver finished the special stage third, 3 minutes and 41 seconds away from Peterhansel, and 48 seconds slower than the Russian driver Boris Gadasin, although he managed to continue to climb up the leaderboard, ultimately finishing seventh.
Nani Roma,
“I’m happy with how the race went, both with the driving and the progression we have been making. The penalty was a shame, but it’s a mistake we made and have to accept. We knew it would be very difficult to beat Peterhansel, who is a very fast driver and is very comfortable with his car, but for us, we did very well in quite a difficult car in which you have to be very precise to go fast. It doesn’t allow for mistakes and we managed that. Today the roads were quite a lot more difficult than yesterday, very rough and with a lot of fine dust which can obscure rocks and, apart from temperature problem, we went well. On balance, overall it was very positive in a tricky race.”
