Turkey day 1

Day 1 in Turkey is finished and when 9 stages are completed, Petter is 6th. Loeb is leading the rally, but he is only one second ahead of Henning Solberg, who is second.

Turkey is a real challenge for both cars and drivers. Narrow mountain roads with a lot of stones make this one of the toughest event on the calendar. Urmo Aava was the first to experience the though Turkish roads, setting the fastest time on today’s first stage – he had to retire on the second stage with suspension damage.

PG Andersson got into trouble today, probably caused by a Turkish stone, when the car’s fire extinguisher suddenly went off inside the car during stage 5. Both PG and his codriver Jonas were totally soaked, and PG’s foot actually slipped off the brakes a couple times, because of the wet.

Chris Atkinson retired on the road-section to SS7 with front suspension damage.

On the day’s last two stages, the drivers started to think about the start order for Saturday. It is not ideal to be first on the road, sweeping the road for the others. As a result of tactical driving, there are now only 6,9 seconds between the first and the sixth driver in the overall classification.

Rally of Turkey continues Saturday with 7 more stages. First car is on stage at 0928 (local time).

Overall classification day 1

1. Sebastien Loeb, Citroen
2. Henning Solberg, Ford +1,0
3. Jari Matti Latvala, Ford +1,1
4. Gigi Galli, Ford +2,2
5. Mikko Hirvonen, Ford +6,9
6. Petter Solberg, Subaru +49,1
7. Matthew Wilson, Ford +1.05,9
8. Dani Sordo, Citroen +1.06,8