MINI Scores First Rally Win Since Return, in Italy

There's one more month before the factory-prepared John Cooper World Rally Car, developed by Prodrive, will make its official return to the World Rally Championship, at Rally d'Italia-Sardegna. However, MINI's first win at comeback has already happened, during last weekend's Rally dell'Adriatico in Italy.

As announced a while back, MINI started handing out S2000 Countrymans to a handful of teams in the past few months, be them WRC privateers or teams competing in national championships from all over Europe, before the WRC-spec variant makes its debut in the Sardegna-based event.

One of those teams is Grifone, whose driver Andrea Navarra was inked in MINI's history pages last weekend after taking his S2000 Countryman to victory in the first round of the Italian Gravel Championship. At the end of the 9-stage event, the Italian finished some 12 seconds ahead of Andreas Mikkelsen, after leading Rally dell'Adriatico from beginning to end.

“It's a great honour for me to give MINI this first victory with Pirelli and another milestone in our history together,” said the 2004 winner of the Italian Rally Championship. “It was a fantastic rally that was competitive from start to finish: we had to push hard but in the end we got the result that we wanted.”

“I really enjoyed driving the car: the turbo engine means that you can drive with the throttle all the time compared to a conventional Super 2000 car, where you are driving with the gears,” he added.

The first round of the Italian Championship was actually MINI's third outing in the world of rallying since the marque decided to return to the sport. In the WRC, the S2000 MINI Countryman debuted last month, during the 2011 Rally Portugal, through Brazil World Rally Team's Daniel Oliveira and Motorsport Italia/BAMP's Armindo Araujo.