Marcus Gronholm completes the top three at this stage – albeit over 15 seconds off the battle for the lead. The Finn began the event badly and lost over 10 seconds on SS1 when he was only seventh fastest.
Although he made some changes and was happier in SS2, setting the second best time, just 0.9 seconds off the stage winner, he was unable to maintain that pace during the remainder of the day and was fourth quickest in SS3, SS4, SS5 and SS6.
Gronholm's
BP Ford team-mate,
Mikko Hirvonen also had a bad start in the sister Focus and finished the morning loop sixth overall, freely admitting that ‘he was driving like a beginner'.
Despite suffering from the ‘flu though he came back in the afternoon and thanks to one stage win and two third fastest times moved up to fourth position overall, to end the leg just 5.3 seconds off the sister Focus.
Further down the order,
Toni Gardemeister completes the top five, having been re-united with Astra-PH-Sport and the
Citroen Xsara WRC for Germany. The Finn set top eight times in every single test bar one, but never managed to break into the top five, much to his annoyance. He finished the leg more than 40 seconds or so off Mikko.
Skoda privateer, Jan Kopecky ended up sixth, while
Subaru third driver, Xavier Pons and
Stobart Ford's
Jari-Matti Latvala round out the provisional points' scorers at this stage.
Pons had brake issues in the afternoon and complained about the cars handling in the morning.
Latvala's day wasn't without incident either and he damaged his front left wheel in SS2 and then had more problems on the repeat run through Grafschaft in the afternoon when he overshot a junction and had to reserve. He also hit a barrier in the final test and bent the suspension on his Focus.
