Ford calm about Citroen dominance

Ford had pulled out all the stops - including a near 1,000-mile test - in an effort to slow the Citroen steamroller on asphalt.

Sebastien Loeb and Dani Sordo have been first and second on the Spanish WRC round for the last three years and the C4s have, once again, been the class of the field through today's six stages. Sordo leads Loeb by 1.6 seconds with Ford's Mikko Hirvonen 32.6 seconds down in third at the end of day one.

"We're perfectly happy with what Mikko and Jari-Matti [Latvala] are doing," said Wilson. "Like the rest of the drivers, Mikko suffered a little bit of understeer in the third stage this morning, so we made some small changes to the car, some re-programming of the differential map, to try and get rid of that for the afternoon.

"One of the things we were looking for was for Mikko to be slightly less aggressive when the understeer is starting to come. Like I said, we're not worried."

Wilson added that Hirvonen was quicker than he had been on the same stages 12 months ago and that he was encouraged by the afternoon.

"Look at the first two stages this morning," said Wilson, "the times were good in there. It was just the last one where Mikko lost time - and he was still faster in that test than he had been last year.

"At the end of the day, it doesn't matter if Mikko is third, fourth or fifth on this rally - the result is the same: he has to beat Loeb in Wales and he's shown this year that he is capable of doing that."