"I had a front tyre problem and then our rear left tyre destroyed itself, so I had no more spare tyres left," he explained. "It was difficult to get back to the service."
BP Ford Abu Dhabi's
Jari-Matti Latvala completes the provisional points' scorers in eighth, nearly 9 minutes off the lead after turbo problems this afternoon.
"I was at the start of the first stage this afternoon with the car in launch control mode when I heard a noise like pressure being released," explained the Finn. "The boost pipe from the turbo had burst and I had to drive all three stages with no boost. I tried to fix it after the first stage but it blew off again. I was unlucky but this rally hasn't been kind to me."
Of the rest
Conrad Rautenbach is ninth, one place outside the points, followed by
Toni Gardemeister, who had engine problems this afternoon and slipped further and further back.
The
Suzuki man was not happy: "It was a bad day. Now we have a problem with the engine and running on three cylinders. At least we made it to here. We were moving very slowly because we had no power from the engine to push."
In total five 'works' drivers were forced out on day two with
Subaru's
Chris Atkinson and Munchi's 'guest' driver Aris Vovos retiring on the opening loop. Atkinson was the first to go, unable to start SS9 due to an electrical problem, while Vovos went out in that test with steering issues.
In the afternoon SupeRally man
Gigi Galli joined them on the sidelines when he suffered hydraulic problems before SS11 and then
Federico Villagra and Per-Gunnar Andersson added their names to the list of casualties, both damaging the suspension on their cars on the repeat run through Aghill Theodori 2.
In the Production Car World Rally Championship, Juho Hanninen had taken over at the top this morning, but he had problem in SS11 and was forced out. That handed Andreas Aigner the lead and the Austrian finished the leg over 2 minutes up on Mirco Baldacci.
