The opening leg of this year’s Vodafone Rally de Portugal saw the newest event in the FIA World Rally Championship live up to its promise of excitement and drama.
The first stage of the event took place last night at the Algarve Stadium in front of 20,000 ecstatic fans, welcoming the WRC back to Portugal for the first time in six years. However, the action began in earnest this morning, with the crews heading for two loops of three stages to the northeast of Faro, the event’s base.
BP-Ford’s Marcus Gronholm set the early pace, despite a heavy landing after a jump damaged his suspension and cracked his windscreen. Although team-mate Mikko Hirvonen took the win on the day’s first stage, Gronholm maintained his overnight advantage through the first loop to return to the first service at lunchtime as leader, even though his suspension eventually failed altogether on the last stage before service.
Behind him, Hirvonen and Subaru’s Petter Solberg enjoyed a close battle, swapping places twice for second and third in the three stages, with Hirvonen eventually winning out by the lunchtime halt. Championship leader Sebastien Loeb started cautiously but a blistering time on the morning’s third stage, the 16Km S.Bras de Alportel stage, saw him leap-frog both Hirvonen and Solberg to take second.
Dani Sordo enjoyed a relatively trouble-free morning, to end the first loop fifth, followed by the OMV Kronos pairing of Daniel Carlsson and Manfred Stohl, Carlsson competing on gravel in the Citroen Xsara WRC for the first time. Jari-Matti Latvala, in the Stobart VK-Ford Focus, suffered transmission problems on the day’s opening stage, when his gear indicator failed and, without knowing which gear his car was in, stalled the engine.
Toni Gardemeister, competing in the latest Mitsubishi Lancer WRC, hit a bridge on the second of the three stages, damaging his suspension so the wheel was pointing into the car by 45 degrees. Gigi Galli was recording reasonable times but didn’t feel they were as good as they should have been, while Chris Atkinson in the second Subaru, was in the same boat. Mats Ostberg was another driver settling into the new event, until he went off the road on the last stage of the first loop and lost more than six minutes getting back on. Fellow Norwegian Andreas Mikkelsen was making sure he avoided rocks on the way through the first loop. National champion Armindo Araujo was also learning the Mitsubishi Lancer WRC and gaining confidence with every kilometre.
After the lunchtime service, which for many couldn’t come soon enough, the main story was tyre wear on the stages, which had by now had the entire field run over them. Many drivers commented that these were some of the most demanding stages they had driven but at the same time, some of the most enjoyable.
Sebastien Loeb came out fighting and pushed as hard as he felt he could and by the end of the second loop, when the crews returned to parc ferme, had overhauled Marcus Gronholm for the lead, albeit by a slender margin of just 3.1 seconds. Behind Gronholm, Mikko Hirvonen maintained his third place, just ahead of Petter Solberg, who gradually lost grip on wearing tyres.
Fifth at the end of the first leg was Dani Sordo, another driver admitting to struggling for grip on the demanding afternoon stages. But the revelation was Jari-Matti Latvala, who mounted a charge to regain the time he lost in the morning, climbing from ninth to sixth, just over 30 seconds behind Sordo. Chris Atkinson made some set-up changes to his car at the mid-day service and felt it was working better initially, although he later complained that he wasn’t happy with the balance, having made alterations to the settings for the last stage and getting it completely wrong.
However, he climbed past Daniel Carlsson but dropped behind Latvala to maintain eighth place, behind Manfred Stohl. Armindo Araujo continued to progress and ended the first day in front of his home crowd in 12th place, behind Gardemeister, Henning Solberg and Gigi Galli.
In the FIA Junior Rally Championship, Urmo Aava dominated the category, with main rival P-G Andersson picking up a puncture in the first of the day’s stages. Aava won all but one of the day’s six stages, to return to parc ferme leading the class by more than 30 seconds, despite a puncture himself for five kilometres. Behind them was another close battle, between Jozef Beres and Michal Kosciusko, who traded times throughout the day, with Kosciusko eventually claiming a narrow advantage of just 2.3 seconds.
Another promising battle was developing between Patrik Flodin in his Group N Subaru Impreza and local driver Bruno Magalhães in the Peugeot 207 Super 2000. The two were extremely closely matched on stage times but on the fifth stage of the event, Flodin picked up two punctures and dropped time. Then, on the middle stage of the afternoon, Magalhães’ gearbox failed and he retired from the first leg. So the overnight Group N lead is held by Vitor Pascoal, followed by Portuguese legend Rui Madeira.
The second leg again features three stages run twice, this time to the northwest of Faro. It includes the longest of the event, the 30.69Km Silves-Ourique test, with the first car starting at 09.48hrs.
