SS11: McRae battles back into the lead

The Scot must now only hang on for tomorrow's (Sunday's) four special stages to ensure a first ever victory in an event he makes no attempt to conceal his dislike of. But as Makinen demonstrated for much of today, that won't be easy if the four-time world champ once again switches to maximum attack mode for the third and final leg.

McRae played it safe on half-studded mixed snow tyres for the second blast through the 36.69km Sisteron-Thoard test, but was still 6.6 seconds faster than Ford team mate Carlos Sainz, who'd gambled on a repeat of his '95 Monte-winning strategy of running intermediates without studs.

"On that run over Sisteron it didn't feel so good on the tarmac," noted McRae, "but it felt better on the snow."

"The numbers say it should have been a bigger difference," shrugged the Spaniard. "It was a gamble, but it didn't really work."

McRae's time was all the more impressive for the Focus suffering hydraulic gearshift problems. He reckoned that the car had jumped out of gear at least 15 times, costing around five seconds, and may go back to a manual system for tomorrow.

Around six kilometres of the stage was covered in hard-packed snow, with the rest as dry or damp tarmac. Francois Delecour took the same safe option as McRae on his Ford, but could only manage fifth fastest time.

Makinen opted for Michelin's take on an intermediate racer on his Mitsubishi, but finished the stage in third, another 1.9s behind Sainz.

"That was not a good tyre choice," said the Finn. "After we left service, it started to go frosty. We were quite far ahead of Colin going uphill, but coming down on the snow was a different matter."

Armin Schwarz and Skoda's metronomic consistency and surprising competitiveness continued with a fourth fastest time - but only after the German had been warned off running full slicks and instead opted for intermediates.

"Michelin was right to advise me not to use slicks," he said. "Perhaps if I'd had a perfect run I could have gained a few seconds, but it would have been a very big risk."

Alister McRae, relatively unscathed after his brush with disgruntled fans on the cancelled SS10, was sixth fastest, ahead of Freddy Loix's Mitsubishi and the Skoda of Bruno Thiry.

Aside from the change of leader, SS1 also saw Schwarz re-pass Delecour for fourth overall. That looks like being a battle that will last all the way to the final corner of the final stage.

Leg three begins with the 32.72km Sospel-La Bollene at 09:08 local time (08:08 GMT) tomorrow morning. Two runs through the 16.55km Loda stage and a repeat of Sospel follow, before the first car takes the finish ramp in Monte Carlo at 15:15 local time (14:15 GMT).


1 Colin McRae (Ford), 26m22.1s
2 Carlos Sainz (Ford), 26m28.7s
3 Tommi Makinen (Mitsubishi), 26m30.6s
4 Armin Schwarz (Skoda), 26m41.3s
5 Francois Delecour (Ford), 26m52.4s
6 Alister McRae (Hyundai), 27m13.8s


1 Colin McRae (Ford), 3h13m42.4s
2 Tommi Makinen (Mitsubishi), 3h13m45.9s
3 Carlos Sainz (Ford), 3h14m38.1s
4 Armin Schwarz (Skoda), 3h15m55.0s
5 Francois Delecour (Ford), 3h15m59.6s
6 Alister McRae (Hyundai), 3h17m59.5s
7 Toni Gardemeister (Peugeot), 3h19m04.2s
8 Freddy Loix (Mitsubishi), 3h19m25.5s
9 Olivier Burri (Toyota), 3h21m10.2s
10 Bruno Thiry (Skoda), 3h25m13.1s