Ekaterina Stratieva will take part in the secound round of the Intercontinental Rally Challange - "Rally Islas Canarias", which started last night. The best bulgarian female driver will be acompanied by the romanian co-driver Carmen Poenaru for the second thime in her career. They both competed together in "Rally Du Var" at the end of 2011.

Before leaving for the Cannary Islands Staratieva announced her plans for 9 starts in the IRC calendar in season 2012. In the first events the team will use the well known Citroen C2 R2 Max and by the end of the season it's possible to change the C2 with its "big brother" the DS3 R3.

Yesterday the was held the traditional shakedown before the rally. The fastest was set by the current series leader Andreas Mikkelsen (Norway, Skoda Fabia S2000). Skoda Motorsport UK driver stopped the timers ar 1:26.9 minutes. Second place in shakedown was for the IRC returning Jan Kopecky (Skoda Fabia S2000) who was half a second behind Mikkelsen. 1.2 seconds slower than Mikkelsen was the third placed german driver Sepp Wiegand (Skoda Fabia S2000).

On the first day of the competiton drivers will face 9 special stages with total 139.4 killometers.