Breen wastes no time ahead of Season Opener

On New Year's Day, Craig Breen will take the first journey of what will be many during his mammoth ERC/WRC-2 2015 season to begin pre-event testing ahead of his first event. Having announced Christmas week he is to lead the Peugeot Rally Academy FIA European Rally Championship campaign for a third consecutive year Craig is more determined than ever to take the ERC title next November and prove that was it not for an unlucky streak in 2014 that he had the package around him to win it then.

First up for Craig and his co-driver Scott Martin is the FIA ERC Internationale Jannerrallye in Austria where the Peugeot pair will compete in their Peugeot Rally Academy 208 T16 on what are often snow and ice covered asphalt roads. The rally runs unusually from Sunday 4 January to Tuesday 6 January taking advantage of a bank holiday in the country and will cover almost 240 kilometres of competitive distance. The asphalt showcase first ran in 1969 and attracts huge numbers of spectators to the base town of Freistadt, 40 kilometres north of Linz in Upper Austria.

The rally gets underway with a short qualifying test on Sunday morning where Craig and Scott will go up against championship regulars like Stephane Lefebvre, Kajetan Kajetanowicz and Robert Consani in a shoot out to determine road order for the opening leg on Monday. The eighteen stages that follow in the spectacular Muhlviertel region use fast, undulating country roads increasing the challenge of these tricky conditions. Weather sources locally are forecasting an ambient temperature range of between minus five and minus twenty one degrees centigrade; snow has also been falling in recent days with more expected.