Andreas Aigner took his third PWRC win in succession on the Rally of Turkey last weekend, the fourth round in the 2008
FIA Production Car World Rally Championship - and in the process he equalled the record set by Toshi Arai in 2003.
Aigner took the lead in the class towards the end of day one and despite coming under considerable pressure from Patrik Sandell on Saturday, he never relinquished the position. Indeed in the end the scrap was decided when Sandell lost time in the final 'proper' stage on day 2 with a broken front left driveshaft, which cost him over a minute.
On the final leg, Aigner and Sandell seemed content to hold position and the former finally won by 48.7 seconds. Aigner now increases his lead in the PWRC standings to 16 points, with Jari Ketomaa and Sandell joint second on 14.
"It's been a fantastic weekend but so hard, so difficult – and three wins in a row is great! I'm really happy to be here as we've had some engine temperature problems but everyone has had some problems - we've just had less I think," reflected the
Red Bull Rally Team man.
"We're leading the Championship quite nicely now but Juho [Hänninen] has done two rallies less than me so I need the lead and we'll see what happens in Finland when I'm not there."
Sandell meanwhile was content to take the runners-up spot in the relatively new Peugeot 207 Super 2000 car, even if he had led for two stages on Friday and still been very much in contention to win prior to that problem in Phaselis 2.
"This is a really good result. We've had lots of trouble in the Production and Juniors this year so far and here we've just had small problems. We're developing the car all the time and I think it can go really fast now," stated the Swede. "Of course I really wanted victory here but after our few problems I'm happy to be second."
