Tanak revealed that he has never been to the island, but you wouldn't be able to see with today's performance. He said: “It’s been a tough day,” said Tanak. “I’ve never been here before, so I haven’t been pushing at the maximum. There are so many rocks everywhere, if you go a little bit off the line then they can catch you out and put you out of the rally. We have been careful. The car has worked really well, we’ve had no problems. I was worried after a big hit in the fourth stage, but the car was good. Today has not been the sort of day when you could make the attack.”
Tanak won six of today's eight stages, with only Hanninen and Prokop able to win a stage. The only worry that Tanak had was after he found one of the rather big rocks which line the stages around the Oristano area.
Martin Prokop took one stage win over the infamously difficult Monte Grighini Sud test, said to be one of the hardest of the rally. The Czech driver took second from Nasser Al-Attiyah on SS2, and remained there. He said that he didn't make the most of Day 1, saying that he might be getting old (Prokop is 28!).
“I don’t know what it is. Today has been really hard. All the time, the road is turning, turning, turning. I don’t feel I have made the best of today, maybe it’s me - maybe I’m getting old! With the number of corners coming all of the time, there has been no time to enjoy these stages today.” said the Czech ace.
Reigning IRC Champion Juho Hanninen is 43.8secs behind the flying Tanak. The Finn suffered a puncture on one of the opening tests, then he suffered brake failure, after brake problems all day.
“There is no pedal at the end of the stage,” he said. “We have lost it. I had to slow down in the long stage. The day was not starting so well for us, either, when we had a right-front puncture near the end of a morning stage. I haven’t been fast enough today, we have to push again tomorrow.” he said.
Nasser Al-Attiyah also had on eventful day today. He caught Hanninen's team-mate Hermann Gassner, who was struggling with a front-wheel drive Fabia after a differential failure, on SS7, then one of his dampers exploded, leading to a fire in the Fiesta. He sits over 3mins 30secs behind Tanak and 2mins 46secs behind third-placed Hanninen.
Fifth is Bernardo Sousa, sixth is Gassner and seventh is Karl Kruda. Points leader Kruda has been another driver to suffer problems, the height of which was when his Fabia dropped onto three cylinders, and stayed like that for two stages. “Not nice...” summed up the Estonian's day.
S-WRC drivers who have joined the retirement ranks are Albert Llovera, who rolled out of the rally and Eyvind Brynildsen lost an argument with a rock on SS4.
German driver Christian Riedemann leads the FIA WRC Academy after a day of attrition amongst the junior drivers.
Day 1 knocked 13 of the Day's 18 starters into retirement, leaving only five Fiesta's still running. The same exact rock on SS4 took eight Fiestas out of the rally, busting each of their sumps. One of them was Co. Kilkenny driver Craig Breen, who lead until he found the rock on SS4.
Before SS4, however, four Fiestas were already out. Alastair Fisher's engine blew on SS1, Calle Ward rolled out on SS1, as did Miko-Ove Niinemae and Brendan Reeves also retired with an engine problem. Egon Kaur, the points leader, crashed off the road on SS2, but managed to get back on the road. He then set about regaining lost time, winning SS4, SS5, SS6, SS7 and SS8, gaining an extra championship point for each stage win. He is 1min 22secs behind leader Riedemann in fourth.
“It was more difficult than I expected, there have been so many retirements,” said the Estonian.
Russian driver Sergey Karakin is fifth, 1min 48secs off the lead. Only he, Riedemann, Fredrick Ahlin, Miguel Baldoni and Kaur survived to begin Day 2.
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