Corsica - Citroën Sport - Leg 1Sebastien Loeb, Daniel Elena and their Citroën C4 WRC completed the first leg of the 2007 Tour de Corse at the top of the overnight standings, with Dani Sordo and Marc Martí following in third place with the second Citroën Sport car.
The
sun was shining for the opening day of France's round of the WRC as competitors headed to the southeast of Ajaccio for 124.28km of competitive action which took the form of a loop of three stages to be covered twice each, plus a visit to the service park in-between.
The high number of spectators, some of whom were undisciplined, led the organisers to take the safe option of cancelling SS1 (Monti Rossu-Pila Canale), which meant serious business only began on SS2 (Bocca Albitrina) in the mountains high above Propriano.
At the ensuing Stop Control, neither Citroën crew was perfectly happy with their run, despite the fast pace and the narrow margins. Seb talked of a minor 'moment' early on, while Dani blamed himself for perhaps being slightly overcautious.
The picture differed little on the following test which saw the two Citroën C4 drivers claim the second and third quickest times once again. Dani and Marc returned to the service park ahead of Seb and Daniel on the provisional leaderboard, but the top-three were tightly bunched together, with the Spaniard a mere 2.9s off the lead and his French team-mate just 4.1s behind.
Nothing was by any means over, although everyone was aware that toppling Marcus Grönholm was not going to be easy...
"Today's wide, reasonably smooth stages were similar to what we found in Spain last week, so it wasn't a surprise to see Marcus go so well" observed Guy Fréquelin at the midday break. "We knew that before coming here, and we were very aware that it wouldn't be easy to repeat our one-two finish in Salou. That said, this rally has only just begun and the day is far from over..."
The words of the Citroën Sport team boss rang true as the afternoon unfolded. After making some small changes to his suspension,
Sebastien Loeb went on to post three consecutive fastest times and pass into the lead. "We needed to push hard today," he related. "I felt more confident after the modifications we made to the set-up of my C4 after the morning's loop. It's nice to be ahead this evening but victory is by no means in the bag yet."
"It was a fierce fight this afternoon," concluded Guy Fréquelin. "After fine-tuning the setup of their Citroën C4 WRC, Sébastien and Daniel put in a magnificent run over today's last three stages to bridge the gap and then pull out a small lead on which they will need to try to build tomorrow. After a promising start, Dani Sordo and Marc Martí didn't take the same tyres as Sébastien for the second loop. Their challenge tomorrow will be to try to catch Marcus Grönholm..."
Citroën Sport
