During the second leg, Gronholm managed to start to ease away - and although Mikko pushed him hard and really made him work for it, in the end Marcus finished the day with a 20-odd second cushion and well placed for the short final leg. On Sunday Gronholm continued to set the standard winning all three tests and eventually taking the victory by 24.2 seconds.
Hirvonen for his part also enjoyed a very good event and while he only won 4 stages, compared to the 17 took by Gronholm, that doesn’t tell the whole story. Indeed the two were very evenly matched throughout the three-day event - and it was best illustrated in SS6 on Friday, in the 13.72 kilometre-run through Mokkipera 2, when they tied for the quickest time.
Loeb for his part never looked likely to challenge the Fords and finished over a minute off Gronholm - only beating the Finn on the first test on Saturday. Other than that the Frenchman was always pretty much third best.
Chris Atkinson brought his
Subaru home in fourth place overall after a very solid drive, while
Henning Solberg was content with fifth place, followed by Xavier Pons in sixth,
Urmo Aava in seventh and Mads Ostberg in eighth. Guy Wilks and Matt Wilson rounded out the top ten.
A number of drivers’ had problems during this event and of the ‘works’ aces, four failed to make it to the end, namely
Jari-Matti Latvala, Manfred Stohl,
Daniel Sordo and
Petter Solberg.
Latvala was the first ‘works’ retirement, when he went off the road on Friday in SS7. On Saturday, three more ‘big’ names joined Latvala on the sidelines. Stohl rolled his Kronos-run
Citroen Xsara WRC in SS13, while Sordo stopped in SS15 when his Citroen C4 developed an engine problem. Petter pulled out after SS15 due to severe handling problems.
