Easy does it for Harper and Rose.

The 2002 Network Q Rally of Great Britain finally got underway late Thursday evening for Padiham based rally driver Daniel Harper, and his co-driver from Shapwick, Somerset, Bob Rose.

The rally started with just a single stage on Thursday evening, the spectator friendly Super-Special in the Cardiff docks.This was a short 2.5k blast around a figure of eight track, set up as a head-to-head with another rally car.

Easy does it for Harper and Rose.

The 2002 Network Q Rally of Great Britain finally got underway late Thursday evening for Padiham based rally driver Daniel Harper, and his co-driver from Shapwick, Somerset, Bob Rose.

The rally started with just a single stage on Thursday evening, the spectator friendly Super-Special in the Cardiff docks.This was a short 2.5k blast around a figure of eight track, set up as a head-to-head with another rally car.

Both Harper and Rose had agreed on a plan of taking this first short stage easy since there are three long days of action to follow. However it wasn't a completely smooth run for the team, with their Mitsubishi EVO VI RS suffering a hiccup in the large man-made water splash at the end of their first lap.

Harper said: "We lost power for a bit immediately after the water splash, which meant we lost a bit of time waiting for the car to clear its throat and then I knocked the car out of gear on a corner... so we lost a couple of seconds overall in there. At least that first stage is now out of the way and we will be into the real stuff tomorrow!"

So after an incident filled first stage Harper and Rose are 64th overall with just over 7 seconds to get back from the GrpN4 overnight leader.

With a very early start scheduled for Friday morning, the crews will leave the centre of Cardiff before heading out to the first long forest stages of the rally, in Brechfa, Trawscoed and Rheola, before finishing the day with another attempt at the Cardiff Super-Special.

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