"It was slippery and I couldn't push any harder," Mikko added. "At times I was driving from ditch to ditch and in places I eased off because I didn't want to go off the road. I'm not sure if I was losing time because I was cleaning the loose gravel, or because I was breaking the damp surface and the cars behind had better grip. This afternoon the roads will be rutted so I hope to find more grip and speed."
Subaru's
Petter Solberg completes the top five, just 5.5 seconds off the battle for third, while
Urmo Aava is sixth in his privately entered PH Sport-run C4 WRC – 27.2 seconds further back.
"The stages were quite rutted for me this morning, but I didn't have any real problems in them," noted 'Hollywood'. "They're quite soft though and there's still a bit of water in places so they'll be worse this afternoon.
"I think they'll be quite badly rutted. There are a lot of rocks in places as well so it's not easy. We've seen some punctures this morning for other crews, so just like before here it's so easy to go off."
Further down the order,
Gigi Galli lies seventh and the
Stobart Ford man would have been higher up, but he lost quite a bit of time in the monster 33.96 km Crastazza 1 test, when he hit a bank.
"We had a good start this morning and the feeling on the opening stage was good despite the conditions which were very slippery," said the local star. "We slid wide on a right hand corner about a third of the way into the second stage though, hit some rocks, and were very lucky to just come away with a puncture.
"We decided not to change it and the Pirelli tyres held up remarkably well after driving on the damaged tyre for 20 kilometres. But the car feels good and on the next stage we set a third fastest time."
Of the rest
Toni Gardemeister completes the top eight in his
Suzuki, followed by
Henning Solberg, who is competing for the Munchi's squad on this event, and Per-Gunnar Andersson.
