The 10 crews that will take part in the Italian Rally Junior 2022 Championship have been announced today in Rome’s Piazza del Campidoglio. The series dedicated to the youngest rally protagonists devised by Automobile Club d’Italia and ACI Sport will have Motorsport Italia as technical partner and will collaborate with Pirelli, Renault and Sparco. The cars employed for this series are the brand new Renault Clio Rally5. Motorsport Italia has also introduced the 10th edition of the Rally di Roma Capitale.

This event took place in the presence of Assessor for Big Events of Roma Capitale Alessandro Onorato, Automobile Club d’Italia’s President Ing. Angelo Sticchi Damiani, CONI’s President Giovanni Malagò, the General Director of ACI’s Motorsport Marco Ferrari, the General Director of ACI Sport Marco Rogano, Automobile Club Roma’s President Giuseppina Fusco, the Vice President of Consiglio Regionale Lazio Daniele Leodori, Renault Italia’s Marketing Director Biagio Russo, Sparco’s Brand Manager Niccolò Bellazzini, Pirelli Rally Product Manager for Italy Walter Nicola and Motorsport Italia’s boss Max Rendina.

The Federation has completed an important selection of all the very young drivers born after 1994 to define the ten crews that have been presented today. These are Sara Carra-Giovanni Barbaro, Alessandro Casella-Rosario Siragusano, Guglielmo De Nuzzo-Fabio Grimaldi, Fabio Solitro-Rosario Navarra, Davide Nicelli-Tiziano Pieri, Davide Porta-Marco Demontis, Mattia Zanin-Fabio Pizzol, Davide Gianaroli-Alessio Spezzani, Matteo Ceriali-Luca Ferraris and Edoardo De Antoni-Martina Musiari.

The Italian Rally Junior Championship will include 6 rounds, four on the tarmac and two on the gravel. The opening round will be the Rallye Sanremo, whose technical stages have hosed the Rally World Championship for many years. The season will then continue with the two gravel rounds at the Rally dell’Adriatico, which will move to Urbino this year, and the historical Rally di San Marino. The second half of the season will include the Rally di Roma Capitale, which will allow crews to measure themselves with the colleagues of the FIA European Rally Championship, while the closing rounds will be the Rally 1000 Miglia and Rally Due Valli, the latter will have an increased scoring coefficient of 1.5.

A big novelty of season 2022 is the car: the Renault Clio Rally5 fitting Pirelli tyres. The Milan-based company developed for this series two compounds for tarmac, PZero RA and Cinturato RWB, and the Scorpion K for the gravel. These are tyres capable of providing performance and grip in all conditions.

The French challengers are pushed by a 1.3 litres engine capable of 180 hps and 300 Nm of torque and will certainly produce a great spectacle on the tarmac and on gravel. Special care has been devoted to safety, as the new cars will mount the new, latest generation Sparco “MASTER” racing seat developed by Sparco in compliance with the new homologation standards FIA 8855-2021 that have safety features very close to those of the Rally1 cars. The safety equipment of cars will also include the FIA 8853-2016 homologated Sparco Prime H-9 EVO seat belts with aluminium buckle to grant the highest lightness.
The collaboration with ACI Sport, Pirelli and Renault will allow the winner of season 2022 to take part in 6 rounds of the 2023 European Championship as the representative of the ACI Team Italia on an important international stage.

An important collaboration will also be with ACI Sport’s Federal School Michele Alboreto, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. Always in the front line for the training and tutoring of young drivers in all the sectors of motorsport, the School directed by Raffaele Giammaria will organize several extra testing sessions to allow the protagonists of the series to improve their skills of preparing races. This activity will be led by the 12 times Italian Champion Paolo Andreucci.

In this important event staged in the Piazza del Campidoglio and in the enchanting Terrazza Caffarelli, Max Rendina and his staff also introduced the Rally di Roma Capitale 2022.

The event organized by Motorsport Italia will celebrate its 10th Anniversary this year and will do so with the double validity for the Italian Rally Championship and FIA European Rally Championship. It will also be part of the Italian Rally Junior Championship. The competition has been introduced by an exciting video teaser and will introduce several novelties both in terms of sporting content and support initiatives. This anniversary not only celebrates the first decade of the sporting event but also wishes to raise the centrality of Rome and Italy in a very important international motorsport event.

In the pictures: on top, the crews, on the right the Renault Clio Rally 5.
The Campidoglio at a glance (lower left), Sara Carra, the first woman in the CIAR Junior, on the new Sparco racing seat (lower right).