Andreas Mikkelsen holds small Rally San Marino lead at end of day one

This was expected to be a relatively straightforward event for Mikkelsen in the absence of the other Skoda factory drivers, yet he found himself back in third at first, behind fellow Fabia men Sepp Wiegand and Umberto Scandola.

Wiegand (Skoda Deutschland) was impressing greatly in only his third start on gravel, and stayed ahead until SS3. The German then had a spin on the next stage and was back in fourth, 34 seconds off the lead, by the end of the evening street stage that rounded the day off.

Ford driver Giandomenico Basso recovered from a stage one spin to become Mikkelsen's main rival, and is only 4.1s behind the reigning champion going into day two.

Scandola is 9.6s down in third place, despite having been hampered by a power-reducing engine issue all day.

Likely frontunner Patrik Flodin was forced to retire his Petter Solberg Engineering Ford due to a water leak after just one stage.

Leading positions after SS5:

Pos  Driver              Team/Car             Time/Gap
 1.  Andreas Mikkelsen   Skoda UK           1h17m08.1s
 2.  Giandomenico Basso  Movisport Ford         + 4.1s
 3.  Umberto Scandola    Car Skoda              + 9.6s
 4.  Sepp Wiegand        Skoda Deutschland     + 34.0s
 5.  Jarkko Nikara       Makinen Subaru      + 1m29.7s
 6.  Juha Salo           SM Ford             + 1m41.6s
 7.  Laurent Reche       Lugano Peugeot      + 1m51.5s
 8.  Maurizio Angrisani  Vomero Mitsubishi   + 3m48.5s
 9.  Marco Tempestini    Tempestini Subaru   + 4m07.8s
10.  Gergely Szabo       Szabo Mitsubishi    + 4m21.9s