SS19: Kankkunen pulls away

Juha Kankkunen has pulled away from Carlos Sainz by another 5s, has he done enough to win his second rally of the year?

It is now a Subaru 1-2, thanks to a blistering fastest stage time by Richard Burns. In Argentina, Kankkunen hunted down and passed his team-mate when Burns looked a certain bet for victory. Could the opposite happen here?

Burns has apparently said that he believes he can win this event and become the first British driver ever to do so. Brimming with confidence, his charge could be the main interest of the final leg.

Marcus Gronholm's Peugeot now seems unable to make any impression on the leaders from 5th place. His French team-mates Francois Delecour and Gilles Panizzi are not having fantastic weekends. Delecour had to be persuaded to continue the rally after differential problems became so bad he wanted to retire the car, while Panizzi is way back in 45th after a trying second leg.

Ford boss Malcolm Wilson is reported to be impressed by Colin McRae's consistent, mature driving on the event, but is less happy with number two driver Thomas Radstrom. The latter looked like a potential winner on leg one but could not reproduce that pace yesterday and eventually lost twelve minutes in an accident. He now runs 19th.

Leaderboard after SS19:

Stage times from SS19:

Burns- 13m48.0s

Kankkunen- 13m49.4s

McRae- 13m52.3s

Sainz- 13m54.1s

Rovanpera- 13m54.5s

Gardemeister- 13m55.4s

Radstrom- 13m56.6s

Gronholm- 13m56.6s

Delecour- 14m09.5s

Lindholm- 14m11.6s

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- The Autosport.com Team

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