The popular Italian is three rounds into his second full assault on the FIA European Rally Championship (ERC) and feels he still has a lot of learning to do in his Škoda Fabia Rally2.
Battistolli was eleventh after the final San Mateo Power Stage and even posted a brace of top-five times over the final two speeds tests. However, he was later disqualified after technical checks found his car to be underweight.
“I am satisfied more than happy because we started with the objective of gaining experience and doing a better job stage by stage,” he told FIAERC.com.
“On Friday we managed to tweak the pace notes between the first and second loop of stages and we did the same again on Sunday. I think I understood things a lot better on the final day and on the Power Stage I was quite confident with what I was doing.
“You know, it’s a long road for me. This is just the beginning, and I’m pretty sure it will take some time.”
Battistolli dropped to eighth in the standings following his non-score, but remained upbeat about the improvements he had made over the course of the rally.
He revealed that a lot of focus was given to the pace notes which helped him and co-driver Simone Scattolin to set a much quicker pace over the second passage of each stage.
“I wasn’t really watching the times, but for me, it was a big improvement because we had to correct a lot of pace notes,” said Battistolli.
“On most of the morning stages I was correcting a lot, so my pace was not the right one. But on the second pass, I was just listening to Simone and he was trying to teach me the secrets of Tarmac.
“Now, I really want to work on this rally and see where I was losing time and things. After that, we’ll concentrate on Poland. I did it last year with Lorenzo Granai and I will do it with Simone next month, so it will be a new experience all over again.”
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