Mitsubishi's Juho Hanninen took his first victory in the
FIA Production Car World Rally Championship category on the Uddeholm Swedish Rally on Sunday, the opening round in the series.
Hanninen had been engaged in a fierce battle with Patrik Sandell for P1, until the Swede spun off and into a snowbank on the final stage on day 2 and lost over 1.5 minutes.
That put Juho in a great position going into the final leg and with a gap of more than a minute he paced himself to the end and finally took the victory by 1 minute 23.2 seconds.
He also finished eighth overall to scoop the final 'senior' WRC point and having lost the PWRC win on this very event last year, due to a technical infringement, the Finn was over-the-moon.
"I'm happy with the result," he noted. "I took the speed off today as we had quite a big gap and there were big rocks so I wanted to avoid a puncture.
"It's been a long day but after what happened last year I'm not celebrating until after scrutineering! After last year's disappointment this is a really good start to the season."
Jari Ketomaa meanwhile took the runners-up spot in his Impreza, a great result for the Finn on his debut outing in the PWRC and he had even led early on before slipping back.
"I would like to have won here but I am very happy with second on my first PWRC rally," noted the reigning Finnish Rally champion. "WRC rallies are much longer than I am used to – probably three times the length of rallies in the Finnish championship - so I'm learning how to take care of everything better to make it last longer."
Sandell was next up and having lost the lead at the end of day 2, he put in a charge to try and overhaul Martin Prokop and grab the final place on the podium. The Peugeot 207 S2000 driver finally moved ahead of the Czech in the last stage and eventually finished 11.2 seconds ahead.
![Juho Hanninen (FIN) / Mikko Markkula (FIN), Mitsubishi Lancer Evo IV [Production Car WRC]. Uddeholm Swedish Rally, February 7-10th 2008.](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/405667.jpg)
