In the end he finished the day more than 1 minute off the lead in his Kronos-run Citroen Xsara WRC and 30 seconds or so off the two BP Fords.
Subaru's
Petter Solberg completes the top six and despite no real problems was unable to match the Citroen C4s - or for that matter the
BP Ford Focus'. His best effort was a fourth quickest time in the final test of the day and his sights are now firmly set on trying to overhaul Duval and grab fifth. Currently he is 9.6 seconds adrift of the Belgian.
Stobart Ford's
Jari-Matti Latvala and Subaru's
Chris Atkinson rounded out the provisional points scorers', the former surviving quite a big scare in the last test of the day.
Further down the pack, Xavier Pons ended up ninth in the third SWRT entry, while
Henning Solberg completes the top ten, followed by Britain's
Matthew Wilson and Thomas Schie.
In the Junior World Rally Championship category,
Urmo Aava ended the day with a 10 second lead, having set the pace in the class in all but one of the tests. The Estonian took over P1 in the JRC in SS3 and then pulled gradually away from his
Suzuki Swift team-mate and chief rival for the Junior title, Per-Gunnar Andersson.
Martin Prokop is third in the JRC in his Citroen C2 Super 1600, albeit over a minute off the battling Suzukis.
Renault Clio runners, Kalle Pinomaki and Jozef Beres are fourth and fifth respectively, while
Conrad Rautenbach completes the top six.
In terms of retirees there were three big casualties on day 1, namely Munchi's team leader,
Luis Perez Companc, OMV Kronos
Citroen's Manfred Stohl and Skoda privateer, Jan Kopecky.
Companc was the first to go out, when he went off the road in SS2. Stohl and Kopecky followed in SS3, the former damaging his Xsara quite badly and as such the Austrian will not be able to rejoin the fold on Saturday under the SupeRally. It is not yet known if Companc or Kopecky will be able to re-start on day 2.
