Sardinia: Subaru World Rally Team - After SS 9 Conditions were dry, warm and sunny as crews left the service area from 0800hrs to tackle the rally's second leg. Chris Atkinson re-joined the event after a collision with some rocks in the road on Friday's penultimate stage.
But with ten minutes of penalty time added and the dubious honour of running as first car on the road, and contending with the worst of the loose gravel, the Aussie's original objective of a top-five finish was out of reach. Instead, for him the day would be more about building experience of the stages, and developing the pace of the Impreza WRC2007 on its fourth rally.
Rally leaders
Sebastien Loeb and
Marcus Gronholm were first and second quickest through the tricky 22km Loelle section, followed by Mikko Hirvonen, Dani Sordo and Petter Solberg, whose Impreza was back to full strength after brake problems on Friday afternoon.
After a refuelling halt, competitors headed to the leg's longest stage, Monte Lerno. Run in exactly the same format as 2006, it featured a mix of conditions and, at the 21km mark, a massive crest known as 'Micky's jump' which launched Chris Atkinson's car more than two metres into the air last year. Atkinson approached things more cautiously this time, and despite acting as road sweeper for the rest the field he completed the section cleanly, with the twelfth fastest time.
Having lost time on leg one with a brake problem, Subaru's Petter Solberg took a gamble with a softer suspension set up on leg two, in an effort to close the gap on the leaders. But the changes did not have the desired effect on the car's performance, and although set a solid sixth-fastest time, it was not enough to catch those ahead.
The third stage of the morning loop was Su Filigosu, which had been extended for 2007 with the addition of a new partly asphalt section at the start. According to Chris Atkinson's co-driver Stephane Prevot, the sequence of jumps, crests and deceptive junctions in the last five kilometres of the stage made it the most difficult section of the day.
Another stage win from Loeb made it a clean sweep of the morning loop for the Frenchman, whose rally lead now stood at 41seconds. Loeb's cause was helped by a slow time from his closest rival
Marcus Gronholm who dropped 12.5sec. Petter Solberg set the seventh-fastest time. After the finish control crews returned to Olbia for a 30-minute service halt.
Petter Solberg
"It's disappointing that we haven't been able to chase down the drivers ahead of us this morning. We made some changes to the set-up last night and now in service we'll have to look at the data and try to understand why they didn't have the effect we expected."
Chris Atkinson
"It was busy out there this morning: the spectators seemed pretty excited when we came through – maybe because they had been waiting for a long time and we're the first car on the road. Running first meant that the road was very slippery for us, because there was some loose sandy gravel on top of the hard base surface. The road will be cleaner when we revisit the stages after service, but we won't be taking any huge risks, because we must also use this car in Greece in two weeks. We're treating today and tomorrow as an opportunity to try some set-up changes and gather some important data to put us in a strong position for Greece."
Source Subaru World Rally Team
