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Tlač 2008
Sapporo - 31-10-2008
After the opening day of the Japanese event, the two factory Ford Focus WRCs of Hirvonen and Latvala are in the lead. Loeb's Citroen C4 WRC provisionally occupies third place, on an event that has seen the cancellation of four stages today due to bad weather and an accident to Duval's Ford.
Mikko Hirvonen has to win Rally Japan if he wants to stand any chance at all of depriving Sebastien Loeb of the drivers' World Rally Championship this year, and he has started the 14th round of the series in the best possible way by pulling out a significant advantage. In his Pirelli Scorpion-equipped Ford Focus WRC, Hirvonen leads the sister car of Jari-Matti Latvala and Loeb's Citroen C4 WRC - who is now half a minute behind.
"We found a good rhythm straight away," explained Jarmo Lehtinen, the co-driver of the leading Ford. "However maintaining it all day was far from easy. At various points the snow and mud made the surfaces extremely slippery. The soft-compound Scorpion tyres on our Ford Focus did their job well, giving us good grip despite several places where the road conditions were marginal. We've got a small advantage over Sebastien now, but it's still a long way off being safe."
The day also witnessed the retirement of the Ford Focus WRC-Pirelli of Francois Duval, who went off the road whilst holding an excellent second place overall. Turbo problems also held back the second factory Citroen of Dani Sordo. These misfortunes allowed Petter Solberg and Chris Atkinson to provisionally climb to fourth and fifth places at the wheel of their Scorpion-equipped factory Subaru Impreza WRCs.
Hirvonen's Pirelli Scorpion-equipped Ford Focus WRC leads Rally Japan
"We found a good rhythm straight away," explained Jarmo Lehtinen, the co-driver of the leading Ford. "However maintaining it all day was far from easy. At various points the snow and mud made the surfaces extremely slippery. The soft-compound Scorpion tyres on our Ford Focus did their job well, giving us good grip despite several places where the road conditions were marginal. We've got a small advantage over Sebastien now, but it's still a long way off being safe."
The Production car World Rally Championship category (for Group N and Super 2000 cars), which is also exclusively supplied by Pirelli, is currently led by Evgeny Novikov driving a Mitsubishi Lancer Evo.