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Al-Attiyah holds off Prokop in Cyprus

Nasser Al-Attiyah continues to lead the Cyprus Rally, and is fending off a strong challenge from the recovering Martin Prokop

Czech Ford driver Prokop suffered a broken driveshaft last night which both cost him time on yesterday's superspecial and led to a 20-second penalty for being late out of service this morning.

He then mounted a charge, winning SS2 and SS3 to get within 11s of Al-Attiyah (Barwa Ford), but Prokop's soft tyres faded on the 17 kilometres of Agioi Vavatsinias, leaving him 19.2s behind Al-Attiyah as they head for service.

Andreas Mikkelsen, one of the pre-rally favourites after his strong second place in Scotland, did not even make it to the first full-length stage, as his Hankook Ford stopped with an engine failure on the road section before SS2.

The Peugeot challenge has also faltered. Bryan Bouffier had to stop for nearly 25 minutes on the Kalavasos stage to change damaged suspension, but despite still feeling the steering was not right, he was second-quickest behind Prokop on SS3 and SS4.

Bouffier's ROMO team-mate Franz Wittmann had to take a 1m50s penalty for being late out of service, and then dropped a little more time when he damaged his suspension on Lythrodontas.

Fellow Peugeot driver Nicos Thomas briefly got up to fifth, but the local favourite lost nearly two and a half minutes with brake and gear problems on SS5.

That leaves Roger Feghali in third, despite the Lebanese driver running with slightly bent suspension after a brush with a barrier on the superspecial. Feghali does not have a spare of the damaged part, but was pleasantly surprised by the pace he was able to maintain even with the problem.

Prokop's team-mate Jaromir Tarabus is fourth, ahead of Roman Kresta in the leading Group N car.

Pos  Driver                   Car          Time/Gap
 1.  Nasser Al-Attiyah        Ford         46m53.4s
 2.  Martin Prokop            Ford          + 19.2s
 3.  Roger Feghali            Skoda         + 29.5s
 4.  Jaromir Tarabus          Ford        + 1m22.3s
 5.  Roman Kresta             Mitsubishi  + 2m04.7s
 6.  Franz Wittmann           Peugeot     + 2m58.3s
 7.  Constantinos Tingirides  Mitsubishi  + 3m08.0s
 8.  Savvas Savva             Mitsubishi  + 3m16.3s
 9.  Nicos Thomas             Peugeot     + 3m26.6s
10.  Daniel Oliveira          Peugeot     + 3m29.3s

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