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Sect. 7, Nyaru: Petter sets pace

The cat and mouse game of trading top section times on the Safari Rally continued between Petter Solberg and Tommi Makinen on section seven, with Solberg putting his driveshaft problems of the previous stage behind him to set the pace

Makinen finished the Nyaru section fourth fastest and had clearly backed off on the 72.37km test, but then the Mitsubishi star can afford to with more than a five-minute lead overall.

Although Solberg lies third on the Rally, the Subaru ace has set the fastest time on two of this morning's three sections. The Norwegian was pushed closest on stage seven by second-placed man Harri Rovanpera, who finished just five seconds behind Solberg to set the second fastest time.

With Makinen dropping back, Rovanpera took 43 seconds out of the four-time world champion's lead, but it will take a serious problem for the sole remaining Peugeot driver to claw back the remaining five minutes which separate the two Finns on the leaderboard.

The long Kenyan stages mean drivers are able to make up big chunks of time from section to section. But long distances also make the gaps between the drivers much larger than normal.

Fifth-placed Francois Delecour finished third fastest in his Focus WRC and made up almost 40 seconds on Armin Schwarz in fourth. But the Frenchman still has another 2m26s to go, before he can retake the place he lost on the day's first stage, due to a broken drive shaft.

Schwarz finished fifth behind Makinen, just ahead of his Skoda team mate Bruno Thiry, who now lies a staggering 31 minutes behind the leader in sixth.

But Freddy Loix in the second Mitsubishi is yet further behind. The Belgian's Carisma GT suffered gearbox problems on the second section of Leg Two, which delayed him for a few minutes, but he now has almost an hour between him and his more illustrious team mate.

The drivers now head back to where they first started this morning for re-runs of the first two sections of the second leg, with a shortened version of Marigat and then Mbaruk to finish the day.

For Sect. 7, Nyaru results click here.

For full live timings table click here.

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