WRC Rallye de Catalunya Day 1

We start this week with Carlos Sainz top of the championship table going into his home rally, but the last time he won on home turf was 8 years ago. With just 6 points separating the top 4 and only two rallies to go there is everything to push for. The first stage of the day goes to Petter Solberg who had such a marvellous win last week. While Sainz is 4 seconds off the pace. Stage two and Solberg cuts one too many corners and tears his tyre on the edge of the road. This causes a slow puncture and losses him 10 seconds. Duval stalls on the start line for the second week in a row and with brake problems drops from 2nd to 9th. While Markko Martin suffers through neck pain after last weeks crash to stay 3rd overall.

In stage 3 Markko Martin and Richard Burns both lose two places and drop to 4th and 6th respectively. While Solberg fights back to 3rd with Loeb still leading. During the service stop Solberg�s mechanics discover his alternator has been damaged and take an extra 5 minutes to replace it which costs Petter a penalty of 50 seconds, dropping him out of the points. In stage 4 Loeb extends his lead while McRae goes wide at a hairpin and hits the armco barrier. In stage 5 the leader board stays the same with Loeb leading Sainz and Martin.

Stages 6 and 7 show Panizzi�s tarmac ability and he wins both stages to move up to 4th overall. In stage 7 Richard Burns pushes too hard around one corner and goes off the stage backwards into a field, Burns finally gets the Peugoet going again although he now has a flattened exhaust and loses over 40 seconds. In stage 8 Loeb adds another 8 seconds to his lead over Sainz while Burns moves back up to 6th after beating McRae on the stage. After Day one the leader board looks like this,

Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | back