St Andre service: We talk to the big guns

"The roads on those opening two stages were definitely cleaner for the later crews. On the first stage, I took it too easily on the clear asphalt sections, trying to keep the tyres in good condition. On the second stage, the conditions were supposed to be the same, but a lot of the snow had melted, so it was borderline on tyres.

"I've also got a clanking in the right rear corner and it's trying to swap ends at every corner we go through, so it's not been perfect so far..."

(Rally leader after SS2) "It's not really a big attack I'm on. All I'm doing is trying to drive smoothly and with the minimum amount of wheelspin.

"I'm using the manual gearshift to change down, because we have a little problem with the semi-automatic shift on the steering wheel at the moment."

"I'm happy with the tyre choices we've made so far, but the conditions are just so slippery."