Press Release - May 8, 2016

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Jean-Sébastien Besner and Yvan Joyal Win in Ontario and Take the Lead of the Eastern Canadian Rally Championship

May 8, 2016.- The Lanark Highlands Forest Rally, the second of nine rounds in the 2016 Eastern Canadian Rally Championship (ECRC), took place this past weekend in McDonalds Corners, Ontario, southwest of Ottawa. The event, contested in perfect conditions, was dominated by Montrealers Jean-Sébastien Besner and Yvan Joyal in an EFI Performance Team Mitsubishi Lancer Evo.9. They won the rally by a margin of one minute and twenty-four seconds and claim top spot in the championship standings after finishing second overall at the inaugural event of the season. 

Last year’s Quebec champions, Besner and Joyal recorded the fastest time on eight of the event’s ten special stages, which attracted twenty-three teams (twenty starters) on Saturday. Jean-Sébastien Besner and Yvan Joyal fully earned their impressive victory but the second place finish cannot go without being highlighted as well.  Novice driver Simon Vincent, co-driven by his mother Dominique Cyr, was in only his second ever rally as a driver, using the family’s Subaru WRX STI, prepared by Test Racing. Having won two of the stages, they were the only team to prevent Besner/Joyal from earning a clean sweep.

Martin and Anthony Bruneau, driving another Test Racing Team Subaru, rounded out the 2016 Lanark Highlands Forest Rally overall podium, only seventeen seconds behind Vincent/Cyr. Quebeckers Bruno Laverdière and Patrick Lévesque (Mitsubishi Lancer Evo.8) finished fourth overall, their highest ranking so far in this series, winning the Production 4WD class after a tight battle with Eric Vlasic and Dean Hopkins (Subaru Legacy). These Ontarians put up a great fight, eventually finishing only three seconds behind, claiming second place in Production 4WD and completing the Top 5 overall. 

Philippe Cotton and Marie-France Desmarais-Trépanier were next on the leaderboard, enabling Test Racing to place three Subaru WRX STIs in the Top 6 standings of the rally.

In 2WD, Zoltan Kovacs and Guy Boudreau won by over a minute in their Mitsubishi Lancer ahead of Philippe Benoît and Véronique Bernard in their Mini Cooper S. Third place went to Patrick Marcoux and Chantal Villeneuve, in a Honda Civic, despite two penalties that cost the team one minute and ten seconds. These three teams all made it into the rally’s overall Top 10, finishing 7^th, 8^th, and 9^th respectively. Peter MacDonald and Ferdinand Trauttmansdorff finished in tenth, driving a Production 4WD Subaru WRX STI.

In total, thirteen of the twenty starters finished the event on the gravel forest roads of McDonalds Corners, all registered in the Eastern Canadian Rally Championship.

The Eastern Canadian Rally Championship (ECRC) consists of nine rounds this season, all at the regional level, spread out between Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritime provinces. The next round, the Rallye international de la Baie-des-Chaleurs, will take place on Canada Day long weekend, July 2^nd, in the Gaspé region of Quebec.

2016 Calendar