Llarena, aged 28, clinched the ERC title in 2022. His performance was less stellar last season, finishing fourth in the championship standings.
Llarena began the previous year in Skoda’s new Fabia RS Rally2 car but returned to the previous development version of the Fabia during the summer. Towards the year’s end, he competed in two events in the older Skoda Fabia R5.
This weekend, Llarena kicks off his racing season in the prior Rally2 evo version of the Fabia, entering the opening round of the Spanish Rally Championship, the Rally Tierras Altas de Lorca. In the competition, he will have the opportunity to gauge his pace against the likes of Gus Greensmith, who is familiar from the WRC2 class. Greensmith is seeking to gain momentum in Spain before his season debut in the WRC, scheduled for the end of March in Kenya.
For Llarena, this weekend’s gravel rally serves as an excellent warm-up for the ERC season opener in Hungary in mid-April.
“Last year was a bad season for us but we have worked really hard during this winter just preparing everything and I am sure we will be fighting for the top positions since the first rally in Hungary,” Llarena shared on the ERC’s website.
His aim is to secure a second European championship, but this year he plans a fresh approach to the competitions.
“In previous seasons I was thinking overall for the championship, but now I will change my plan and we will do rally by rally. The target will be to be as fast as possible everywhere. Okay, we were fighting before, we were fast, but we were also thinking for the championship to not have problems, to not have accidents with the tyre.”
“We did a reset in our minds and we will change the way to compete. We have the speed and we want to show the speed since the beginning,” Llarena asserted.
