Day 3am: Burns closes the gap

With just two stages remaining of Rally Turkey's debut on the WRC calendar, Richard Burns has closed the gap to the leading Citroen of Carlos Sainz, but the English Peugeot ace remains over a minute adrift of his Spanish rival

Mar 2, 2003, 10:35 AM

The final day started with a short blast on SS14, where Citroen's Colin McRae set the fastest time. The serious stuff began on the much longer SS15, where Burns clawed back 10secs on Sainz's lead. Carlos was only fourth fastest, but his time was sufficient to keep his lead at over a minute.

Ford's Francois Duval came in for criticism on the eve of the rally from Ford team chief Malcolm Wilson (he labelled his form "abysmal"), but the Cumbrian must be now purring about his French charge who was quickest on SS16 to hold off McRae's overtures towards his third place. Burns only pulled back four-tenths of a second on Sainz here, which was hardly enough to make the veteran sweat much.

Duval's team-mate Markko Martin continues his relentless charge up the leaderboard. He is now in sixth, and chasing Peugeot's Gilles Panizzi.