SS1, Coldirodi 1: Burns out, Gilles flies

Burns was only 4km into the stage when he went off the road. We'll bring you full details of his retirement when the Englishman gets back to service.

So with Burns out, attention turned to which of the event's sealed surface specialists would make their mark on the first stage and Panizzi duly came up with the goods.

The fiery Frenchman completed Coldirodi in 7m55.7s, one and a half seconds clear of Peugeot team mate and defending champion Marcus Gronholm. Panizzi is nominated to score manufacturer points for Peugeot ahead of the Finn, but Gronholm's time shows he's not showing any less commitment on the twisting asphalt roads.

Carlos Sainz also proved that he is a talented all-rounder, sneaking ahead of the highly fancied Citroen Xsara of Jesus Puras to nick third overall, however Puras' team mate Philippe Bugalski had a bad start to his Sanremo. He hit a wall on SS1 and although he could continue, he's already more than 25 seconds off the leaders.

Behind Spaniards Sainz and Puras was French duo Didier Auriol and Francois Delecour. Joint championship leader Colin McRae was seventh fastest, followed by Frenchman Sebastien Loeb. This is the first outing for the runaway Super 1600 championship leader in the Citroen Xsara WRC, and although he's racked up over 600km of testing in the car, a top 10 stage time is still a good achievement.

Petter Solberg is the leading Subaru driver down in ninth and Simon Jean Joseph in the Peugeot 206 WRC rounds out the top 10.

Tommi Makinen is having his first taste of the new Mitsubishi Lancer Evo WRC in competition and the four-time world champion is down in 11th, but only nine seconds off the leaders. His team mate Freddy Loix is encountering teething problems with the new car - an electrical fault affecting the transmission left the Belgian 24 seconds behind Panizzi.

Burns wasn't the only casualty on SS1 - Skoda's Armin Schwarz is out with an alternator problem and Piero Liatti, brought in to bolster Hyundai's attack has also retired after crashing his Accent 1km from the end of the stage.

For SS1 Coldirodi 1 results, click here.

For full live timings table click here.

For full entry list click here.

For the itinerary click here.