SS1, Baltar: Mud-caked Makinen takes early lead

The fact that 40,000 Portuguese fans had already bought tickets was the
only excuse for the event organisers to run tonight's fiasco. A mudbath of a rallycross circuit that made last year's Cardiff superspecial look like a dustbowl was hardly the place to show off the sport.

With cars barely identifiable after a few metres, the stage times were just as farcical. Some of the world's top drivers found themselves losing over 10seconds for each of the stage's 3.2kms and tonight's leaderboard is unlikely to bear much similarity to the end result.

Makinen probably got the best of the conditions and avoided having
copious quantities of the glutinous mud dumped on his car by his head-to-head rival Harri Rovanpera's Peugeot as the cars ploughed through what had once been a watersplash. Instead, the second car of the pair had its windscreen plastered with mud and this further affected the stage time.

Too dark to be run on TV, the stage served only to line the organisers'
coffers and was roundly criticised as a result. Only hours before, the
organisers had been presented with an award for the most improved rally of last season - but on this showing it won't get a look in this year.

SS2 (Vizo 1) gets underway at 08:36 GMT tomorrow, with top drivers predicting more problems with mud as several of the stages are run twice. Follow all the action as it happens on Autosport.com.