Second place puts Canadians L’Estage/Richard atop Rally America standings

OCEAN SHORES, Washington (April 25, 2010) – Second place in the rugged Olympus Rally was all it took to keep Canadians Antoine L’Estage and Nathalie Richard atop the Rally America Championship standings after a frenzied two-day battle here in the third round of the U.S. series.

Two-time Canadian rally champions L’Estage and Richard, of Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec, posted blisteringly fast times on nearly every stage of the Olympus Rally but ended up one minute, 42.0 seconds short of winners Travis Pastrana and Christian Edstrom in a closely fought battle that saw the top Canadian and U.S. competitors converge on this Pacific coast town for two days of forest rally action.

A windshield that fogged up on stage 8 cost L’Estage and Richard 30 valuable seconds. “The weather was miserable – it was raining and hailing,” recounts Richard. “The windshield completely fogged up two corners after the start and Antoine couldn’t see anything.”

“Travis was really flying, and it would have been very tough to catch him,” says Richard. “Antoine always wants to win, but we decided to concentrate on the championship. Second was a good result.”

It is the third time this year the Yokohama-sponsored Mitsubishi Evo X has carried L’Estage and Richard to a second-place finish in the premier U.S. series. The pair have a six point lead in the standings with three events left on the 2010 Rally America calendar.

With a long break in the Canadian national rally schedule between the first event in February and the second event near the end of May, two Yokohama-supported Canadian teams turned up at Olympus. In addition to L’Estage and Richard, reigning Canadian champions Pat Richard and Alan Ockwell (Subaru) were added to a star-studded Olympus entry list. Richard and Ockwell recovered from a high-speed ‘off’ on stage 4 but were never a factor despite setting two fastest stage times.

The next event in the Canadian Rally Championship is the Rocky Mountain Rally in Calgary on May 28, 2010.

Yokohama Tire (Canada) Inc. markets and distributes a full line of tires for high performance, passenger car, light truck, and commercial truck applications, as well as off-the-road tires for mining, forestry and construction applications. It maintains distribution centres across Canada to serve more than 700 independent tire dealers and more than 2,000 retail locations.