Jari-Matti Latvala finished the morning in eleventh and while he had initially grabbed the lead after storming through SS1, a mistake in SS2, dropped him down the pack and cost him more than 90 seconds.
"It was my mistake," Latvala admitted. "Maybe my pace notes were too quick, but at a downhill right bend about 18km after the start I hit a soft bank and the tyre came away from the rim and went down straight away.
"Because it was a rear tyre I decided not to stop and change it because I would lose too much time and that proved the right decision. Now my target is to regain more places this afternoon."
Federico Villagra trails Latvala in twelfth, followed by
Conrad Rautenbach, Khalid Al-Qassimi,
Matthew Wilson, Mads Ostberg and current Junior WRC leader, Martin Prokop.
Prokop took the JWRC lead in SS2 and now has a 3.5 second lead over Michal Kosciuszko, with Patrik Sandell third and Sebastien Ogier fourth. Jaan Molder completes the Junior top five.
In terms of retirements only one major name has gone out - namely Andreas Mikkelsen, who rolled his Ramsport-run Focus RS WRC car in SS2.
The action now continues at 15.18 hours local time, when all three of this morning's stages will be repeated to conclude the first day's action.
More to follow then...
