[Speaking in the mid-day service] "This morning the stages were difficult as there’s snow on the roads but it’s not thick so it easily wears down to the gravel. We got stuck in a snow bank about four kilometres into stage three. The car just snapped and we went off. It didn’t do much damage, but we couldn’t get restarted again for a long time and lost about 15 minutes. We’ll look at the data and make some changes to the car this evening in service as I didn’t have a good feeling on the ice and gravel. We’re running third on the road so I hope for us the stages this afternoon will not be too bad, but for sure they will get rutted by the end of the day. We focus now on getting to the end of the rally and scoring some points."
Notable retirements:
Per-Gunnar Andersson [Suzuki WRT]: [retired from event in SS4 - engine]
"This is not what I was hoping from my home rally, but with any new car you have to accept that problems can occur. This was only my second event with the car and I’m happy with the pace we were able to show, which I think was good enough to finish in the points. Now we have to get to the bottom of what happened in order to make sure it doesn’t happen again - this is all part of the learning process."
Sebastien Loeb [Citroen Total WRT]: [retired from day 1 after service B - mechanical - will re-start on Saturday under the SupeRally]
"I hit a snowbank with the front of my car on the inside of a fast left-hander [in SS4], and that sent us into a spin. I tried to get the car back in line but we hit a bank and rolled. We landed on the stage but a problem with the clutch meant that we weren't able to re-start at once. It was a driver error but the car didn't really take a big knock. Had we been able to service after the stage, I think we would have been able to continue."
