Three crews, three titles. The Fabia celebrates
The Fabia RS Rally2 rally car is enjoying a title-winning year. In September, the young Estonian Robert Virves dominated the WRC2 category of the World Rally Championship and won the world title for Škoda for the first time since 2023. Finland's Teemu Suninen won the European title and the Fabia is also celebrating at home, with Dominik Stříteský winning the Czech title.
Motorsport
Fabia RS Rally2 Reaps a Rich Harvest of Titles
Crews driving Škoda cars won three major titles in September – in the WRC2 category of the World Rally Championship, in the European Rally Championship (ERC), and also on the domestic scene.
Although the World Rally Championship culminates in early October with the Italian rally in Sardinia, the Estonian crew of Robert Virves and Jaakko Viilo has already secured the WRC2 world title. They came significantly closer to it thanks to second place in September's Chile Rally, where they also secured the overall win in the WRC2 Challenger sub-category. The International Automobile Federation (FIA) then cancelled the season's final rally in Saudi Arabia due to the tense situation in the region, which settled the overall standings as well.
For the Škoda special, this means a WRC2 title after a two-year break. The last time it was celebrated was in 2023, by Norwegians Andreas Mikkelsen and Torstein Eriksen.
Finnish joy in Wales
In the European Championship series, the Portuguese Rally Six Cities still remains to be completed, but the overall winners were already decided in early September in Wales. The Finnish crew of Teemu Suninen and Antti Haapala, driving a Fabia RS Rally2, took part in the Rali Ceredigion tarmac rally for the very first time, and it showed right from the qualifying stage. They set the fastest time there, and in the special stages they could benefit from starting on a cleaner track. They made good use of this advantage, eventually finishing second and securing the overall ERC victory in both the drivers' and co-drivers' standings well ahead of time. They thus became the first Finnish European rally champions since 2014.
"Amazing! On Wednesday I couldn't believe we'd be able to drive at such a pace, because I was feeling quite unwell. In the end, we did a great job in extremely demanding conditions on tarmac," said T. Suninen at the finish, referring to the illness that had been troubling him before the start.
The Škoda cars' success in Wales was further underlined by the Polish crew of Mikołaj Marczyk and Szymon Gospodarczyk, who finished third. Max McRae and Cameron Fair finished fourth, securing victory in the British Rally Championship standings.
Final event decides the Czech title
In an exceptionally tense Rally Pačejov, Dominik Stříteský of the Auto Podbabská Škoda Team won by just 2.4 seconds. Thanks to this narrow margin, he was able to celebrate the national championship title. Over the season as a whole, he won 4 of the championship's 6 scheduled events. "I'd like to thank my co-driver Ondra Krajča for his flawless pace notes and my team for preparing a top-notch car. Even after a serious crash at the European Championship round in Poland, I felt great support from everyone around me, so this title belongs to our whole team," said Dominik Stříteský, commenting on the win that brought him his second national championship title. In the top five of the final Czech Championship standings, 4 of the 5 dealer teams were driving Fabia RS Rally2 specials.