Preview: San Remo Rally.

The 12th round out of 14 in the 2000 FIA Rally Championship takes place at San Remo, Italy, with just five points separating the top four drivers at the top of the championship standings.

The event will be the last asphalt rally of the season with the stages run in the hills behind the coastal resort town of Ligurian. The route being the most compact ever run in the World Rally Championship and also the first (for over 20 years) to make substantial use of the same stage roads in both directions. This has been done to allow the large number of spectators to see the cars run up to four times without the need to move between stages.

The last round at Corsica saw Colin McRae have a lucky escape when he crashed out of the event after plummeting 30 feet off a hillside on the ninth stage of the event. The Ford Focus driver suffered a fractured left cheekbone and a bruised lung, however despite having to undergo an operation on his badly swollen face he will take part in this weekends event, being just four points behind championship leader Marcus Gronholm he could not afford to miss any of the remaining three Rallies.

McRae said, "After the operation I was always confident I'd be OK to compete but had to wait for approval from the surgeon. Now that's happened, I'm delighted. I want to put the accident behind me and concentrate on winning the title. We didn't lose much ground in Corsica and I'm going to Italy with just one thing in mind and that's to win the rally."

Second place in the championship is Subaru driver Richard Burns, just two points behind leader Gronholm, who feels he can regain his early season promise "I think that now after Corsica we're much better informed about which tyres to take in which conditions, and we've also been doing some hard work on testing suspension set-ups to maximise our speed on the smooth surface. A fourth place in France was quite an encouraging result, and with the benefit of some time between the rallies to look at what we achieved on the variety of stage conditions we encountered, we have reason enough to feel pretty confident about San Remo."

The pre event favourites must be the Peugeot team, who won dominantly in Corsica with Gilles Panizzi and finished second with Francois Delacour, championship leader Gronholm was a credible fifth having competed in just six tarmac events. The Finnish driver will be hoping that he can keep his championship lead after this weekend before heading to the final two rounds in Australia and Great Britain - both held on his favourite type of surface, gravel.

Gronholm's Peugeot team will be looking to gain points on Ford in the Manufacturers Championship where they are just nine adrift, with fending off the challenge of Subaru, five points behind them in third.

Carlos Sainz (McRae's teammate) lies fourth in the championship, just five points off Gronholm and knows what is needed this weekend to boost his championship chances "First and foremost we go to Italy looking to win. We need maximum points to try to open a lead at the top of the championship. If that's not to be, we must finish ahead of our rivals to score more points than they do."

Sainz then explained the unique challenges of this Rally "San Remo is always about weather and tyres. If it's dry it's OK, but if there's no sunshine the roads can be slippery under the trees. We often have to make our tyre selection a long time before tackling the stages. The weather in the mountains can change quickly and we can find ourselves on unsuitable rubber for the road condition."

Reigning four time World Champion Tommi Makinen has endured a disappointing season, currently eighteen points off Gronholm and knowing his chances of defending his title are slim. Nevertheless he feels that softening the suspension for this weekend has improved the handling of his Lancer evolution.

Speaking after the recce yesterday Makinen said, "The surface is already slippery in many places. It is hard to tell what it will be like on the rally, but there was so much rain in the recce that it is bound to be difficult. Bad weather conditions would be good for us I think, but these are nice, flowing roads which I like anyway." His Mitsubishi team currently lie fourth in the Manufacturers Championship - a massive forty-eight points behind ford.