Leg 1: McRae, Makinen poised for battle

Makinen led from the start of today's four stages, but he showed that judging the pace on this African adventure is tough as he eased off the throttle a little too much on the final stage and saw a 2m31s lead over Colin McRae after SS3 be slashed to just 16.1s on the marathon final stage of the day.

McRae kept his cool to win the two stages that Makinen lost out on and is finely placed for tomorrow's longest day that includes two more runs over today's first stage, already regarded as one of the roughest of the event. Happily this event breaks from tradition by not reverse-seeding the leading 15 cars on legs two and three so Makinen and McRae will not be further penalised.

As several drivers fell by the wayside today, Richard Burns climbed into the top 10 but the reigning World Champion seems unable to match the pace of his title rivals.

The championship was thrown wide open on the opening stage when series leader Marcus Gronholm retired his Peugeot with a blown engine within minutes of the start. As the day unfolded, Subaru lost its Norwegian star Petter Solberg with engine problems, Toni Gardemeister found himself with three wheels on his Skoda, Francois Delecour blew his Mitsubishi's engine and Hyundai lost both Armin Schwarz and Freddy Loix before first service with electrical and clutch failure respectively.

Alister McRae might have joined them when he smashed a wheel and a whole collection of related suspension parts on the final stage but he managed to limp to the finish, dropping just under half an hour to the leaders in the process and seeing a top 10 finish disappear in the dust.

The weather conditions have been hot, dry and very dusty. Anyone working in the service park emerged this evening looking like victims of an explosion in a paprika factory, such were the choking red clouds that hung in the air.

Tomorrow will be made up of five stages but these will provide a monster test of card and driver. This morning's first stage was regarded by many as a car breaker and tomorrow it will be tackled twice, once in each direction. A repeat of today's final 106kms stage is also on the agenda as is a re-run of SS3.

McRae wasn't too worried about re-running SS1 but was more worried about the repeated SS3. "Today's first stage only includes about a kilometre of really bad roads and you are driving so slowly that you can probably get away with it. The third stage, however, is quite fast and so you are going to be at a higher risk of hitting trouble as the speeds will be higher."