Somaschini aims to get back on track in the ERC after Fafe practice roll

The Italian’s Citroën C3 Rally2 was flipped onto its side during the first run of Free Practice for the opening round of the 2023 FIA European Rally Championship and it required the help of fans – and photographers – to get it back onto four wheels.

“In the first pass in the Free Practice we tried to avoid a rock and I’ve done something wrong, we hit I don’t know what and we rolled, not totally, but we flipped on our side,” the 29-year-old explained. “There was not a lot of people so I needed to go out and ask somebody to flip [the car back onto four wheels], but there were only photographers [at first] so we will have a lot of photos but nothing important happened, we needed some people to help us go straight and then I continued.

“I did the second pass [of Free Practice] so no problem at all, only the look of the car is not good but everything is okay. It’s obviously not the best start [to the rally] and I lost a lot of confidence but it’s okay. I did the Qualifying Stage and we tried to fix the beauty of the car but in the Qualifying Stage the road was destroyed completely with a lot of mud and everything.”

Co-driven by Nicola Arena, Somaschini is planning a six-event ERC campaign in 2023, her biggest campaign to date.

As well as aiming to progress behind the wheel, Somaschini is using her competition career to promote her charity #CorrerePerUnRespiro (#Racingforabreath), which aims to raise awareness of cystic fibrosis and fund research into the condition from which she suffers.