Dani Sordo, Yohan Rossel and Pierre-Louis Loubet will prepare for Portugal

If the rule limiting the number of test days for the teams has undoubtedly not allowed them to make a lot of savings, it will, however, have made several organizers happy. After Andreas Mikkelsen's participation in an event in the Alba region in Italy in preparation for Croatia, it is now up to Dani Sordo to benefit from a training race. These one-off appearances are one of the solutions deployed by manufacturers to offer more kilometers to their drivers than during the 21 days which are granted to each team for the entire season.

Having not run since his brief rally from Japan (ES2 exit), the Spaniard will be able to get back into the rhythm of the competition. He will also return to dirt, a surface on which he has not ridden since Acropolis 2023 (in September 2023). Integrated into a classification specially created for him, the Spanish veteran (41 years old on May 2) will not compete in all the ES, but only 5 ES of the program, i.e. 62,58 km, because there is a section which will be taken by the WRC and this must not resemble illicit recognitions. The native of Torrelavega will not be the only representative of the world present in Amarante. Several WRC2 candidates will make the trip.

The WRC2 has definitely changed in scope. If before the drivers came to do their 7 compulsory races and disappeared, it is no longer really possible to participate in this competition without careful preparation. Almost all title contenders arrange their time to do rallies beforehand. This will still be the case before Portugal. This will allow Aboboreira to host a superb line-up. Third round of the Portuguese championship, this race will bring together the main candidates for the national crown. Winner of the first two meetings, Kris Meeke (i20) will aim for the pass of three, but Armindo Araujo (Fabia RS) or Ricardo Teodosio (i20) will want to prevent him. They will face strong foreign competition.

Two Citroën C3 Rally2s driven by Yohan Rossel and Nikolay Gryazin will host the debates along with Pierre-Louis Loubet. For the latter, it will be the first appearance in Europe since the CER 2023. The Corsican will compete there with the Toksport team and Loris Pascaud his new co-driver. Jan Solans (Yaris), Marco Bulacia (C3) and Josh McErlean will also be on the trip.

7 special stages and just over 107 timed km are on the program in a region which will host part of the 2^e stage of the Portugal Rally in the WRC (May 9-12).