WRC '09 round 3 : Cyprus

As we will be hearing the first day's result of Rally de Portugal shortly today, we might as well recap the last round. A contrasting event to the Norway as Cyprus event is dominated by gravel with hot temperature hovering into 40 degrees. It is quite a tough event for some and particularly drivers who participate for the first time. The event consists of 14 stages covering 332.07km where its first day has a great portion of mixed tarmac-gravel condition.

Ford has prepared meticulously their cars for gravel's assault; softer roll bar and long travel spring. The RS Focus now has increased ride height. Instead of equaling Citroen's performance, Mikko has been struggling all day long in the first day with the gap of 60.2sec to his rival at the end of the day. Ford drivers are not impressed at all with their car's behaviour on the mixed tarmac-gravel stages. Apparently they could not adopt with the new settings as yet!

Day two provides more gravel portion giving Mikko a better opportunity to pursue second position held by Sordo, both drivers involve in some neck to neck race. Mikko is able to win from one split section to another, and rapidly build 15.5sec lead over Sordo. Not only he could secure his second position he also beat Loeb on six of the remaining eight stages to the Frenchman’s deficit.

Sensing his rival closing in, Loeb the "Master" of gap-lead starts to push harder. He spins not once but twice on SS 8 and 11, perhaps due to taking it to the extreme. And to add to the injury he also suffers from braking failure which he later has to do some road side work to bleed off his C4's brakes. Commenting at the finishing stage Mikko seems to be happy as he could shorten the gap to a mere 27.2sec and make further comparison to his last Cyprus debut of huge 5 minutes gap to Loeb's.

Meanwhile Jarri Latvala is only 3.4sec behind Mikko when the 23-year-old Finn hits a corner on Saturday’s second stage and gets his car stuck in a ditch. He runs for 1km to find enough spectators to lift the car out and consequently falls from fourth to 25th position. It is a pity as he was faster than Loeb prior to the incident.

The highlight of the event though is the performance of former World Rally Champion Petter Solberg. The Norwegian, on barely his second outing as a team owner/driver, improves from sixth on the opening day to claim the third place on the podium behind Loeb and Miko. Petter also scores the fastest on SS11 a 26.25 km long stage at Kuordali. He must be proud of himself, as he does very well indeed considering all the circumstances. (Mind you he once stalled his Xsara at a junction, resulting 12sec loss!)

On his first Cyprus entry Sebastien Ogier has involved in many spins and withdraws the event a good one km prior to finishing stage due to a crash. The fourth WRC Round Rally de Portugal will be based at Faro on the Algarve. Rumours has said that the former champion Marcus Gronholm will join the event on Subaru Imprezza S14 prepared by Prodrive. Welcome back Marcus, we'd love to see Loeb gets his hands full and busy. We would like to see some action rather than a well predicted wins!

BREAKING NEWS : Portugal - SS1 at STADE ALGARVE#1 starts on 02/04 at 16:50, results.......