Stobart Ford's
Gigi Galli was surprised to score on the Rally Argentina last weekend, after he had to retire from day two in the mid-day service.
The Italian had been running in fourth when problems caused by the rough terrain left him struggling with smoke pouring from his Focus RS WRC car and while he made it back to service his mechanics were unable to fix the issues within the allocated time.
With so many other drivers also hitting problems though he was soon back into the points on day three, up from eleventh to eighth in the first stage on Sunday morning, before overhauling eventual Production WRC winner Andreas Aigner for seventh in the penultimate stage.
All-in-all it was a reasonable event and apart from that issue on the Saturday, Gigi set some very good times, including winning SS7 on the Friday and setting five additional top three efforts.
"Wow, last night I did not think I could finish this rally in seventh position but it just goes to show the rally isn't over until you cross the finish ramp," said Gigi.
"What happened on Saturday was unlucky for us and my mechanics did a fantastic job trying so hard to fix the car before time ran out so I must say thank you to them all.
"On the first day things felt very good even though the conditions were the worst I have ever driven in my career. We had some good stage times and even a fastest on one of them so this is a good sign for Jordan because I have only had limited kilometres on gravel, in the car. There have been so many people out supporting this rally even though the weather has been terrible and this is great to see."
Gigi's Stobart team-mates
Henning Solberg and
Matthew Wilson meanwhile weren't so lucky and neither made it to the end.
Henning retired from each day - with rock impacts taking him out on legs one and three, while he was withdrawn from the afternoon stages on Saturday in order to preserve his car for the next event in Jordan.
