“It's a shame about the final stage, but you have to respect the decision of the organisers and accept that it was the right thing to do. It's too bad for the people who are actually coming to watch the stages, but that's a part of the game,” stated the Norwegian. “It's unbelievable the number of people here, like Finland, and it's great for the sport anyway."
Atkinson was one of only three drivers' to complete SS6 competitively and the Aussie will have wished he would have missed it as an error when he overshot a junction cost him 30 seconds and a place on the leaderboad.
He now lies just 2.2 seconds up on
Stobart Ford's
Henning Solberg and 33.1 seconds off ‘Hollywood'.
Citroen semi-privateer
Urmo Aava and
Suzuki's
Toni Gardemeister complete the top ten, followed by Per-Gunnar Andersson in the other SX4 WRC car, and then Ford men Andreas Mikkelsen and
Matthew Wilson.
Conrad Rautenbach and Peter van Merksteijn are 14th and 15th, the latter getting his first taste of a 2007 spec Ford Focus this weekend.
In the Junior World Rally Championship category, Martin Prokop took the lead in SS2 and following the four tests the J-WRC runners drove competitively, he is 7.6 seconds up on fellow Citroen C2 S1600 runner Sebastien Ogier.
"We had some grip problems with the tyres since the first stage this morning, but afterwards everything went well,” stated the Czech driver. “We were able to find a good rhythm on roads that we already know quite well, thanks to our victory here last year. Now we plan to maintain the same pace over the next two days of the event, in order to score the points that we need to improve our championship position."
Aaron Burkart completes the J-WRC top three, 37 seconds further back, with Renault's Gilles Schammel fourth and Florian Niegel fifth. Alessandro Bettega, Kevin Abbring and Andrea Cortinovis come in sixth, seventh and eighth.
As for retirees,
Gigi Galli was the only major runner to hit problems, when he crashed out 11.3 kilometres into SS5. The Italian's Stobart Ford Focus went off at high-speed and ended up on its roof after going into some trees.
Gigi was airlifted to hospital with a fractured left femur and is due to have an operation tonight.
His co-driver Giovanni Bernacchini was also taken to hospital. He was given the all-clear this afternoon and discharged with just cuts and bruises.
