Suzuki drivers make a solid start in Sardinia

Both Suzuki drivers have made a solid start to the Rally d¹Italia Sardegna, round six of the World Rally Championship. Toni Gardemeister returned to final service at the harbourside in Olbia occupying a provisional 10th position, while his team mate P-G Andersson was about nine seconds behind him in 11th. The crews were greeted by cooler conditions than were expected on Italy¹s round of the World Championship, and stages that had been made extremely slippery by recent heavy rainfall.

The Suzuki crews made a cautious start on the opening stage, but Gardemeister was up to an impressive sixth by the end of SS2 and arrived at midday service in a point-scoring eighth. Both cars have reached the finish of day one with no major problems and are poised to improve on their positions over the challenging leg two tomorrow.

Both cars were largely reliable throughout the day¹s six stages, despite the extremely rough conditions. Toni encountered some small gear selection problems throughout the day but otherwise had a clean run to the finish, while P-G struggled with a slight front brake problem. Thanks to some of the improvements introduced since the Jordan Rally, there were no other issues with the cars all day: a promising sign that the decision to concentrate on reliability is yielding results.

Toni Gardemeister: ³Today has actually been a very good day for us. To be sixth fastest and sixth overall at the end of the longest stage of the rally this morning was very encouraging. We had a few problems with the downshifts on the gearbox all day, but really nothing major. I just tried to be very smooth and precise on these stages, because if you go off the line then it is easy to have a puncture or hit a rock.²

Leaderboard after Day 1
1. S Loeb/D Elena FRA Citroen C4 1hr 31min 27.6sec
2. D Sordo/M Marti ESP Citroen C4 1hr 32min 03.3sec
3. P Solberg/P Mills NOR Subaru Impreza 1hr 32min 21.4sec
4. M Hirvonen/J Lehtinen FIN Ford Focus RS 1hr 32min 26.5sec
5. C Atkinson/S Prévot AUS Subaru Impreza 1hr 32min 36.6sec
6. G Galli/G Bernacchini ITA Ford Focus RS 1hr 32min 39.9sec
7. J-M Latvala/M Anttila FIN Ford Focus RS 1hr 32min 58.7sec
8. H Solberg/C Menkerud NOR Ford Focus RS 1hr 33min 20.1sec
9. U Aava/K Sikk EST Citroen C4 1hr 33min 47.4sec
10 T Gardemeister/T Tuominen FIN Suzuki SX4 1hr 33min 50.5sec