Suzuki's
Urmo Aava heads the
FIA Junior Rally Championship category on the Rally d'Italia Sardegna following leg one on Friday.
Aava grabbed the lead in the very first stage and proceeded to win four of the day's six stages and end proceedings 8.3 seconds up on his team-mate, Per-Gunnar Andersson: “I'm obviously happy to be leading but the hard part starts now, as we have to try and stay there,” said Aava. “The stages today were really rocky and I was taking a lot of care to avoid punctures: luckily we had no problems.
“P-G is right behind me though and that means there is a certain amount of pressure. After that, we have a big gap to the others. We'll keep the same rhythm tomorrow and hope that luck stays on our side for once!”
Aava and Andersson dominated proceedings in their Swifts, with P-G winning the two other tests. Neither Suzuki driver had any reliability problems - and with both avoiding any punctures, they pulled out a 3 minute cushion over the next best runner.
“This has been a really tough day just as I expected, and from the beginning I was determined not to take any risks. As I'm leading the championship there is no need,” explained P-G. “Tomorrow the stages are more open and wider, so I think I might be able to go a little bit harder.
“It's very close between myself and Urmo and I'm sure he wants to win as much as I do. We have to be sensible though: I don't think either of us will take unnecessary risks.”
Martin Prokop meanwhile is ‘best of the rest' in his
Citroen C2 Super 1600, even if he is a long way back.
“This morning I was inadvertently held back by Conrad [Rautenbach] who was running in front of me on the road, and so I was not able to push as I should,” said the Czech. “The gaps between everyone were very small. This afternoon we were able to pull back some of those gaps and I'm very pleased to be the leading Citroen driver tonight.”
![Urmo Aava (EE) / Kuldar Sikk (EE), Suzuki Swift S1600 [Junior RC]. Rally de Portugal, 29th March - 1st April 2007.](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/306087.jpg)
