With only 3 rounds remaining of the 2001
FIA World Rally Series, the 45th Tour de Corse will play a crucial part in the battle for the World Rally Drivers Championship title. Tommi Makinen and
Colin McRae enter the round on equal points, with Sainz and Burns less than ten points behind them. With this being the final round of the 2001 series to be run on asphalt roads, the Peugeot drivers, Auriol, Panizzi and Gronholm, will be especially determined to make the most of their recent good performance on this surface.
Ford, who are currently leading the Manufacturers Championship, have been testing in Britain for the Network Q Rally since Sanremo. Both Sainz and McRae have new cars for the Tour de Corse Rally and are both nominated to score manufacturers points. McRae thinks the team will have a better chance in Corsica than they did in Italy: “As in Italy it will be difficult against the asphalt specialists and it’s not hard to see them dominating again. The asphalt on Corsica is more abrasive than in Italy which sould suit us and if we can keep the points tally moving it will be good in championship terms for Ford and myself.” Francois Delecour will be driving a third car, and isn’t concerned by the new timing of the round: ''Being later in the year there is greater likelihood of rain and we at Ford would like that.''
The arrival of the new cars in Sanremo only spelt trouble for Mitsubishi. Engineer Bernard Lindauer explained the problems: ''The electrical component failures which affected both cars were undetected before the event. Normally we would have had more chance to run the cars beforehand, but building the new cars left us short of time''. Makinen's rear differential trouble was probably a knock-on effect of the other trouble. The team will be using the same cars again for this weekends rally, but they have had time to iron out some of the problems.
