Luis Perez Companc came through to score the first ever manufacturers' point for the Munchi's Ford World Rally Team on the Acropolis Rally on Sunday when he brought his Focus home in eleventh place.
The event though was by no means trouble-free for the Argentine and before it even started he suffered a blow when it was confirmed that regular co-driver, Jose Maria Volta would have to miss the event following their heavy crash in Sardinia.
Despite that though, Companc settled in well with substitute partner, Jose Luis Diaz and day one was trouble-free.
Saturday however wasn't quite so good and a severe puncture in the afternoon on the second pass through Agii Theodori proved costly and he lost 4 minutes.
He also came under intense pressure on the final day from fellow Ford runner,
Jari-Matti Latvala, who could have deprived him of that final manufacturers' point. In the end though, he did enough to hold on to finish eighth of the ‘works' teams, albeit by only 7.2 seconds.
“This has been a very exciting rally for me and to finish off by scoring the first manufacturer point for my team is absolutely amazing,” he said. “I had to push quite hard at the end as I was under pressure for my position but I managed to hold it off to collect the point.”
Asked about the rally in more detail, he noted that while they had odd problems, he couldn't really complain. He was also very pleased with how Diaz performed.
“We had the usual problems on this tough rally and I had to adjust to a new co-driver; but we came through it well and concentrated right to the end,” he added.
“This rally has a very slippery surface and I found the car was moving about quite a lot on top of the loose gravel. I actually thought there was something wrong with the car as it was behaving very different from normal. Leg 2 was one of my hardest days for a while; it was tough going. Jose is a very good co-driver though, we had a good recce and he did a good job in the car this weekend.”
