The season’s first proper sealed surface rally got started this morning. Many people are expecting this rally to be the final nail in the coffin for Sebastien Loeb’s challengers in this year’s championship race, with Loeb holding a 22 point over Petter Solberg, and Loeb gunning for his third consecutive victory in Germany. Solberg has been hoping for poor conditions, as the Pirelli-shod Impreza seems to do better in the wet, to keep his championship hopes alive.

The rains did come on Leg 1, but unfortunately for Solberg he chose a harder compound tyre, and hasn’t been able to keep pace with the Citroens of Loeb and Carlos Sainz. Solberg is currently in fourth, roughly a minute behind the leaders and third place driver Francois Duval.

There’s already been one retirement, Peugeot’s Marcus Gronholm, who slid off the road on the very first corner of SS1, damaging his wheel. Gronholm has blamed the shunt the lack of gravel crews on the event (typically, a team will have a car drive the stage just prior to the start to provide up to the minute conditions for the drivers), which have been banned by the FIA. While you can feel a little sorry for Gronholm, no other drivers got caught out on that corner….

Currently, heading into the day’s last stage, the top 8 look like this:

1. Sebastien Loeb
2. Carlos Sainz
3. Francois Duval
4. Petter Solberg
5. Markko Martin
6. Roman Kresta
7. Gilles Panizzi
8. A Bengue

Posted on 20 August 2004