Sébastien Loeb, fastest driver in the first leg of the Rally Catalunya
Sébastien Loeb ends the first leg of the Rally Catalunya as leader after having scored four scratches throughout the day. The French driver has an advantage of 26.2 seconds over his team-mate Carlos Sainz, who has proved to be very regular, combining excellent performances in the morning with intermediate positions in the evening stages.
The day started off with a significant low temperature of around 0ºC in the stages. In these conditions, Petter Solberg made the best time score in the first special, and was the only one able to keep up the pace of the Citroën until his Subaru suffered a problem in the alternator. At that point, his engineers repaired the car in the Vic Assistance Park, but he was late to the start control and was penalised with 50 seconds. From then on, Solberg was not able to catch up.
On their behalf, the Peugeots had a lot of problems in the morning stages due to a wrong tyre choice. The drivers of the French team set up tyres with a compound that was too soft, which prevented them from making competitive scores. During the evening things changed and Panizzi marked two scratches, however, Richard Burns went off the road, and that cost him 40 seconds and three spots in the overall classification when he was positioned among the best.
As for the Ford team, excellent performance by Markko Martin, who, despite the physical problems in the cervical vertebrae after his Corsica accident, made one scratch and remains third in the classification, whereas his team-mate François Duval, has always remained within the leading scores.
With the mind set on the weather, tomorrow’s leg is bound to be a struggle, after what has been seen in the first leg of the Rally Catalunya, where the differences are only significant in the case that drivers have problems. This was the case of Solberg and Burns, and the equality is proved in the fact that up to 5 drivers can be found within less than one minute. Tomorrow 8 stages will be fought starting at 8:53 a.m.
Good behaviour of the fans in the first leg of the Rally
The first leg of the Rally Catalunya has been significant for the good behaviour of the fans who attended the special stages. In this Friday leg, the Rally was followed by the most loyal fans, those who are really aware of the importance of safety in such an event. The fans have kept an exemplary attitude, following the appropriate rules, placing themselves correctly in the stages and cooperating at all times with the organisation.
The crowds have attended the Public Zones set in each stage and have followed the instructions of the marshals, which were given through the speakers of the Organisation’s cars.
A larger amount of spectators is expected for the remaining two legs on Saturday and Sunday, but today’s behaviour must be the example to be followed by all the spectators that go to the stages to watch live the participants of the Rally Catalunya-Costa Brava.
