McRae: I'm in the perfect place to attack

The Ford ace finished leg 1 in fourth place, 14.7 seconds behind rally leader Marcus Gronholm's Peugeot. But the Scot believes that with the three cars starting ahead of him acting as road sweepers for the rock-strewn stages, he is in the optimum position to get the best of the conditions and build up a defendable cushion for Sunday's third and final leg.

"We're in the ideal place for tomorrow," said McRae. "Fourth position on the road means we get better conditions than those in front and the time gap is very small. With Tommi (Makinen)'s retirement we have a great chance to close the gap on him here and I'm looking for maximum points."

McRae stressed the need for accurate driving on the rough Cypriot stages, saying: "If you strayed off the ideal driving line then you were simply handing seconds to your rivals, but staying on the right line, which was starting to become cleaner by the time we came through, paid off."

Fellow Brit Richard Burns is in second, just 5.7s from Gronholm, but he also believes that McRae is in the ideal spot.

"Ideally, I'd like to be where Colin is," he said, "but I'm not massively unhappy to be second."

Burns' effort came despite dust problems in his Subaru Impreza hampering his vision at crucial points on several of the day's six stages.

"We're still troubled by dust coming through the roof vent," he noted at the day's final service. "I've hit banks and all sorts because of it. It's really that bad."