FRC: Barral wins GPC seat for French season opener

Thomas Barral has won a seat in a GPC Motorsport-prepared Abarth S2000 in next month’s French Rally Championship opener.

The Grenoble-based driver, winner of the 2006 Clio Cup Rally Championship, came out on top in a competition organised by GPC, the champion team in last year’s French Rally Championship, and the prominent Rallyes Magazine and will now compete on the season-opening Touquet Pas des Calais event on 19-21 March.

Entrants competed on an identical course in the Abarth S2000 machine and Barral beat off competition from Cyril Audirac, German Bonnefis, Jeremi Ancian, Denis Millet, Mathieu Arzena, Clement Dub, Pierre Campana and Thomas Prive to win the event, despite terrible snowy conditions on the Saint-Sixt-based course.

GPC Motorsport boss Georges Guebey said: “We were interested in this project straight away and managed to attract partners to take it a little further. Therefore we are now able to run the winner of the competition (in Le Touquet). They all deserved to win, but there could only be one winner. That is life.

“But thank you to all the drivers. It wasn’t easy to run in those conditions, with rain and show, and they all showed a lot of talent.”

Watch the French Rally Championship on Motors TV (Sky Channel 413, Virgin Media 545) in 2010.


Andy Wilkinson