Post any updates \ stage times \ discussion on the rally so far in here, then those that are avoiding the info till tonight (channel 4, 7.30pm) can do so with ease...

:cheers:

:drive:

umm nothings happened yet....

skoda's gonna kick butt though....

What not to do on the shakedown.... (wrc.com)

Kahle and his Octavia WRC 2 failed pre-event scrutineering due to turbo and exhaust mods, they've had to change the whole lot before being allowed to start.

First stage: Didier is 17s down, Toni 21s down. Both outside the top 10.

The Subarus are crushed by the Pugs, Fords and Citro

but we dont want to push too hard on the first few stages.. better to finish on a first run than throw it away overdriving.. im sure they boys will turn the wick up as confidence grows

Auriol was about a second per KM off the pace on stage, Gardenmonster even more :( Still if they're treating it as an extended test session it should be good ~> faster than the Hyundais anyway

top 10:~

1 R BURNS 0.0

2 M M

Ah, but they did beat the Hyundais straight out of the box!

The guys are 13th and 14th now. Will probably become 14th and 15th after asphalt expert Philippe Bugalski's run, but they are not likely to drop any further down the field.

Bug looks like he had a problem or was still eating breakfast!

13th and 14th is good fresh out of the box on tarmac

The Fabia in full war-paint (taken from www.rallye-magazin.de)

Stage 2, Skoda still 13th and 14th, Burns now leads from McRae. Auriol 33 secs off 1st, Gardemeister 40 secs.

Ah, that rear spoiler looks superb!

It's one of the best looking WRCs out there

Solberg 12th... Pirelli haven't got their act together!

Tommi's the top Pirelli runner in 10th, I guess they might be praying for rain now.

Man, that Event Dashboard on wrc.com is eating CPU time! Dreadful thing...

Very good for information though I use that and the 'normal' wrc too, plus Ralliart or Subaru for snippets of information ~ not that i'm addicted to rally at all.....

Whoever said it was an addiction? It's called a keen interest, Erik.

About the Dashboard: on my home PC it would be no problem at all - but here at work I'm still behind a P133, and that's with an 8 Mbit connection! Can't wait until we get the new Dells installed here in August.

Having said that, web designers should take older machines into consideration when programming such an auto-refreshing page. The ones at f1.com and f1-live.com work just fine on this old bugger...

Unfortunately I now have to leave to go and prepare for a rally myself so I won't know what's going on for a while.

Still it's raining and our 6R4 likes the wet, here's hoping.......

M

Oh dear, Markko M

Toni and Didier are closing up! Toni's just 3s short of M

Just watched the program on C4, once again it would seem they are conerntrating on the same top drives. They mentioned the new fabia at the beginning briefly then we see it in action for about 5 secs in the whole program.

The two Fabias are out now... Loeb has taken a slim lead over Gr