Rally Britain 2000
Leg One
At the start of the final round of the World Rally Championship Peugeot driver Marcus Gronholm definitely had the upper hand. He started the rally in a championship lead of nine points, which meant that his only title rival Richard Burns had to win the event, with Gronholm finishing worse than 5th. Starting as the favourite is never easy, though, and history has shown that anything can happen in the British round of the series.
The event is now run entirely on Welsh gravel roads. Rallying started on Thursday evening with the obligatory super special run in Cardiff, the new base of the event. The fastest time on the short stage was shared by two Finns of totally different generations; Juha Kankkunen, a multiple world champion, and young Janne Tuohino, who entered the rally with a privateer Toyota. The two championship contenders Gronholm and Burns also finished the stage with identical times, two seconds behind the leaders.
The first leg started on Friday morning with 7 stages in the agenda. On SS 2 Richard Burns hit a rock and damaged the suspension of his Subaru Impreza, losing more than 30 secs to the leaders. Fastest on the stage was Petter Solberg with the Subaru, who took the initial lead. On the following stage the Norwegian lost more than three minutes with problems, though. Colin McRae won stage 3 and took the lead of the rally. Marcus Gronholm was going well, he was third, only 5.6 secs behind McRae. Juha Kankkunen had an off and lost a lot of time.
Gronholm was actually fastest on stage 4, and moved to second place past Carlos Sainz. Burns dropped further as there was no service between the morning stages; he was now 57 secs behind the leaders, so winning the event looked all the more difficult for him. Hyundai's Kenneth Erikson retired on SS 4.
Gronholm showed no signs of just securing the title, as he also set the fastest time on SS 5 and moved into the lead. Burns was now more than a minute behind the Peugeot driver. He had got the suspension repaired and tried furiously to catch up with the leaders. McRae regained the lead on stage 7 and made a great time also on the final stage of the day, SS 8, pulling a lead of 19.7 secs to the second placed Gronholm. Sainz was again third, after some battling with Tommi Makinen, and Burns had risen to 5th, still almost a minute behind the leader.
Situation after stage 8 of 17:
1. Colin McRae (SCO) Ford - 1.15.40,0
2. Marcus Grönholm (FIN) Peugeot +19,7
3. Carlos Sainz (ESP) Ford +51.3
4. Tommi Mäkinen (FIN) Mitsubishi +52.6
5. Richard Burns (ENG) Subaru +58.3
6. Didier Auriol (FRA) Seat +1.00.6
-. Juha Kankkunen (FIN) Subaru +1.24.4
-. Francois Delecour (FRA) +1.32,2
-. Gilles Panizzi (FRA) Peugeot +1.44.4
-. Tapio Laukkanen (FIN) Ford +2.17,4
-. Harri Rovanperä (FIN) Seat +2.24.9
-. Toni Gardemeister (FIN) Seat +2.35.5
