Leg one round-up: Colin’s day; Peugeot’s daze

He has revelled in the changeable conditions and has praised Ford's new Pirelli tyres as snow gave way to wet roads with each passing stage.

All three Ford drivers; Francois Delecour, McRae and Carlos Sainz (in that order) set fastest stage times once the early flurry of bizarre results was out of the way.

Peugeot semi-privateer Toni Gardemeister was fastest on the snowy opening stage, with little-known German Group N driver Hermann Gassner taking the scratch time on the second stage as the star names found themselves on unsuitable tyre options for stages that quickly cleared and gave later runners a big advantage.

That out of the way, Ford took over the running with only Mitsubishi's Tommi Makinen getting a look in on the fastest time sheet to lie a distant second overnight.

For Peugeot the event was again a disaster. Last year all three factory cars failed to restart the second day, but this year they didn't event get that far. World Champion Marcus Gronholm suffered a boiled engine, Gilles Panizzi threw his car off the edge of the road and Didier Auriol shed a wheel while leading on SS3.

Subaru fared almost as badly, with Markko Martin's new Impreza coasting to a halt on the way out to the first stages (another engine failure to add to those in the pre-season tests), while Petter Solberg's stated aim of taking it easy on the final two stages today was clearly not to be heeded as he rolled the car out of second place on SS5...

Tomorrow sees the cars in action over five stages, including two runs over the notorious Sisteron, where the altitude changes often bring about classic Monte conditions of dry asphalt at the start and finish, with snow and ice at the summit.