End of Day 1. Sebastian Ogier leads from Dani Sordo with Mikko Hirvonen third. Petter Solberg is fourth, 18.5 secs behind leader Ogier. Six-time World Champion Sebastian Loeb holds sixth, the result of his road sweeping duties. Jari-Matti Latvala, Federico Villagra, Kimi Raikkonen, Matthew Wilson & Ott Tanak fill up the remaining top ten places.
Ken Block retired on SS1 with less than one mile to the stage finish. The American extreme sports star hit a tree stump with the front-right wheel, which was buried in a soft bank. The impact sheared the tie rod at the endlink. The Focus then went off the road, as Block was incapable of controlling the car.
“What really sucks is that I was driving conservative,” says Block. “We weren’t even cutting the turn, just brushing along the bank when we heard a really loud snap,”
"I wouldn’t have minded if I was going flat out, risking it all, but I was just keeping it smooth…bad luck I guess!”
Henning Solberg hit exactly the same stump, breaking exactly the same part on the Norwegian's car.
Both drivers will restart the rally under the SuperRally rules tomorrow (Saturday).
Aaron Burkart holds 7.5 secs over Theirry Neuville in the J-WRC. Kevin Abbring holds a solid third, a 1:31.3 gap over Alessandro Broccoli but is only 6.3 secs behind second placed Neuville.
Reigning FSTi champion Craig Breen leads Harry Hunt by 1 min 19 secs. Irishman Breen also holds 19th place overall to boot.
Breen said: “I’m over the moon with the day’s work. The stages were rough but our car reformed brilliantly and I set a good pace from the start. I’ve never rallied on these types of stages before and was very pleased to find a rhythm early on. We are 19th overall with no pressure on us, tomorrows stages will be very tough but all we can do is push on and see what happens from there.”
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