SS14, Oliveira do Hospital 2: Burns turns up heat

His second successive fastest time on Oliveira do Hospital 2 has turned up the heat on Gronholm, who is the only Peugeot representative in the top 10. Burns's 18m42.02s run was around 30secs slower than event leader Tommi Makinen's time through the same stage this morning, which reflects how badly the test has cut up.

The times were close on the second running of the stage. Ford's Carlos Sainz was only 1.5secs slower than Burns in his Focus, and the Spaniard has closed Makinen's lead to 23.9secs.

The Finn was also slower than Mitsubishi team mate Freddy Loix and Gronholm on the stage, but still only 3.9secs off Burns's leading pace - the kind of close times that the rally was expected to produce before the atrocious weather intervened.

Special Stage 15, a repeat of SS12, and SS16 have both been delayed due to the adverse weather conditions.


Richard Burns, Subaru 18m42.0s
Carlos Sainz, Ford, 18m43.5s
Freddy Loix, Mitsubishi, 18m44.1s
Marcus Gronholm, Peugeot, 18m44.9s
Tommi Makinen, Mitsubishi, 18m45.9s
Didier Auriol, Peugeot, 19m13.1s


Tommi Makinen, Mitsubishi, 2h28m21.9s
Carlos Sainz, Ford, +23.9s
Marcus Gronholm, Peugeot, +2m14.1s
Richard Burns, Subaru, +2m20.3s
Freddy Loix, Mitsubishi, +4m05.1s
Francois Delecour, Ford, +5m49.2s
Markko Martin, Subaru, +8m11.4s
Alister McRae, Hyundai, +9m19.5s
Kenneth Eriksson, Hyundai, +9m41.5s
Tapio Laukkanen, Toyota, +12m23.5s