MI Pair Ready for Battle

Shakedown for Rally Indonesia has just completed, and APRC TV’s Brian Young caught up with the Motor Image drivers, Cody Crocker and Rifat Sungkar, earlier today.

Brian Young: Cody, you may not leading the championship, but you’re one event up on the series leader Katsu Taguchi.

Photo courtesy of linear-photographs.comCody Crocker: Yes it’s a great position only two points behind Katsu, but we’ve got three rounds to go while they now only have two events left. We just to need to keep up with Katsu and if we’re in front him by the end of Malaysia we’ve got the championship.

Coming into Indonesia here we’re looking good, but this event is very different from the previous rounds. We have the heat which going to be really tough thing to deal with. It a very tough rally anyway, but the heat plays on your mind and some of those split second decisions you have to make are often not the right ones. You tend to make a few mistakes that you wouldn’t in a cooler rally, that leads to mistakes, puncturing a tyre for example. We’ve got to stay calm, keep the pressure on the other guys and then we’ll in a good position. Quite different from rallying in country where the temperature is a lot lower.

The shakedown we’ve just done was a bit of wake up call. You think this cars not doing what I want it to but because the roads are so slippery its made up a powdery dust. There’s a lot rocks on and off the road so you can’t afford to be cutting corners and being too aggressive, but at the same time we’ve got to be going flat out to keep with the other competitors because they’ll pushing hard too!

We’re the first car on the road so we’re the first to find those rocks, so we’ve got to play the fast game as well as the smart game.

Photo courtesy of linear-photographs.comBY: Home rally Rifat, are you looking forward to it?

Rifat Sungkar: Yes I am. Last week was our independence day so hopefully I can wave the flag on the podium. There’s strong competition here and a lot of the stages are the same from last year so no real advantage for us.

BY: You posted a very good time in shakedown.

RI: Yes, we have changed some setup in the car, the team is doing really good work for us. We have made very good notes and I’m taking this very seriously and I hope I can score good points in my home event.

I’ve found a really good setup for my car and shakedown times are good. I’m familiar with the characteristic of the road and the surface. Last year I got three punctures, but this year we have Pirelli tyres and hopefully that won’t happen again.

I’m having a good battle for the Indonesian Rally Championship with my brother Rizal but I am focusing on Motor Image and our APRC campaign. That is the priority. But if we can do a good result for our Indonesian Rally Championship that will be great.

Photos courtesy www.linear-photographs.com

This article originally appeared on aprclive.com and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the FIA Asia Pacific Rally Championship or its partner organisations.

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