Road rallies – 74th Rallye de l’Ain: one more Ain for Toniutti! – Short but intense night …

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74th Rallye de l’Ain: one more Ain for Toniutti !

Road rallies - 74th Rallye de l'Ain: one more Ain for Toniutti! - Short but intense night ...

For the second year in a row, Site and official KTM driver Julien Toniutti won the Rallye de l’Ain on his KTM 990 Superduke against the Corsican resistance and after a suspense maintained until the end of the race. ! Report.

Short but intense night…

9.45 p.m .: it starts again for the night stage. A large loop plus a small one, the case should be settled in under three hours.

Night girdles, first! The road is dry, everything is fine and no surprises for the first three times, we resume the same as in the final classification of the day: Paul-Christian Piazza (1’31.68) ahead of the pilot Official KTM site Julien Toniutti (1 ’33 .63). Paul Christian is widening the gap! Flavien Coitoux on KTM 690 SMC is third in 1’34.39 ahead of another Site rider, Nicolas Pautet on KTM 990 Superduke (1’35.97).

The sidecars are not let down and the crew of the Choda Kawasaki 1100 ZZR Amblard / Bourdiaux consolidates its lead of less than 4 tenths over its competitor in the category (Laur / Ferrieu on Choda Suzuki 1300 GSXR) by obtaining a ninth time scratch in 1’39.03 (11th time for Laur / Ferrieu in 1’39.39).

Challes, first night passage: Julien Toniutti sends the mash and slams a time of 1’27.55 which allows him to take almost two seconds to the young Corsican Paul-Christian Piazza (1’29.47). The third fastest time is for Flavien Coitoux on KTM 690 SMC in 1’31.80 but Nicolas Pautet does not give up and climbs his KTM 990 Superduke to fourth place in 1’33.08, barely a tenth ahead of Corse Bruno Langlois on Ducati 1100 Streetfighter (1’33.19).

We then repeat the long loop just to cover a kilometer: one hour CH, quiet, then 35 minutes connection and we are back in Cerdon.

This time there is only 10 minutes of assistance before the last short lap of this 74th Rallye de l’Ain: just enough time to refuel, check the tire pressures, a little espresso and off we go. !

For the last passage through Ceignes, Julien Toniutti knows that he returned to almost the same gap with Paul-Christian Piazza as at the end of the day stage. He therefore puts a lot of gas on the handlebars of his KTM 990 Superduke and improves his time of the first night passage by exactly 5 seconds (1’28.63): impressive! Paul-Christian also knows that Julien will do the maximum and put the package, but not enough to catch up with Julien: he gets the second fastest time in 1’29.51, almost 9 tenths behind Julien. Flavien Coitoux reinforces his third step of the podium with the third time in 1’30.93.

As for the sidecars, the Laur / Ferrieu team put up resistance on the handlebars of their Choda Suzuki Hayabusa hitch and obtained a fourteenth scratch time (1’38.72), thus regaining a little less than a second and a half on the Amblard / Bourdiaux time which shows here the 21st time in 1’40.18.

Challes, last! Julien Toniutti has about three seconds to take on Paul-Christian Piazza if he wants to win the rally … The official KTM site driver on his 990 Superduke will therefore "unpin" and give Challes the best scratch time, even more faster than the best day time obtained by Paul-Christian Piazza: 1’24.73! With this incredible time he took more than 5 seconds from Paul-Christain who obtained the second time in 1’29.75. It’s race won for Julien who will join Cerdon peacefully, like all the other competitors by this famous tiny routelette downhill on the hillside of the vines of Cerdon.

Thus ends the race against the clock for this 74th Rallye de l’Ain. Original due to the fact that it was necessary to adapt over the passages in the special following the lack of recce, a questionable concept because even if it does not visibly increase the risk of falling during the race (no accident was to be deplored during this rally) while considerably reducing the risk of accidents during reconnaissance, it removes from the discipline the convivial side of the days preceding the race during the tune-ups of the motorcycles, the benchmarks and other discussions of bikers on the edges of the road … In short, if recos were to disappear, the rally would change its mind, but we are not there yet…

Marcus HIMSELF

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