Rally Catalunya 2000
LEG THREE
There were still four stages reserved for the final day, two stages to be run twice, to be exact. On the liaison section before the first stage of the day Colin McRae had a clutch problem and fixing it took a litle more than 10 minutes which was the allowed time for service, so McRae picked up a ten second penalty. To make that up, he was fastest on the stage, but his competitors Burns and Sainz were not far back, and the gaps were closed to 1.3 secs to Burns and 7.7 secs to Sainz. Francois Delecour passed his team-mate Marcus Gronholm in 6th place, as expected. Didier Auriol dropped to 12th place with problems.
On SS13 the situation in the front became even more thrilling. Tommi Makinen was fastest and continued in 4th place, 31 secs behind the leader. Burns and Sainz were marginally faster than McRae, the differences within the top three were now virtually nothing, 1.1 secs and 5.5 secs, respectively. Outside the points scoring positions, the result list was alive all the time. After SS13 Andrea Navarra with his private Toyota passed Skoda's Armin Schwartz for the 9th place.
On the penultimate stage, SS14, McRae was fastest, just as he had been in the morning on the same stage, and Burns was now 5.9 secs behind the Scot. Sainz was five seconds slower and his margin widened to 11 secs. Francois Delecour got stuck in third gear and lost almost a minute and a half. This meant that Gronholm was back in the 6th spot.
As if to show how competitive the WRC is, the two front runners, McRae and Burns, posted exactly the same times for the final stage of the rally. So, Colin McRae took his first victory since Portugal last year and must be relieved to see the long spell of bad luck and errors finally end. For Richard Burns, second place is not bad at all in his challenge to take the championship this year. Carlos Sainz came close, but not quite enough to beat his rivals at his home event. Tommi Makinen took a solid 4th place after some problems.
Panizzi, still an asphalt specialist, really got into speed on the dry surface on Saturday and Sunday, and was fastest of the Peugeot drivers. On the final liaison Panizzi stopped and deliberately took a one minute penalty to give Gronholm the fifth position and two championship points. Thus Peugeot maximized their points from the event as Panizzi is not seriously competing in the drivers' championship. As Gronholm didn't count in the manufacturer points, Panizzi and Delecour got three points for the team by finishing 6th and 7th.
Freddy Loix was 8th after some problems, and the best privateer Toyotas of Andrea Navarra and Markko Martin again finished in front of some works drivers. Especially Martin, not very experienced on asphalt surfaces, showed again good speed. The Skodas and particularly Seats again had all too many problems. Seat clearly has the potential to be fast, but they really have to develop their reliability to be competitive.
Results of Rally Catalunya:
1. Colin McRae (SCO) Ford - 4.07.13,0
2. Richard Burns (ENG) Subaru +5,9
3. Carlos Sainz (ESP) Ford +11,7
4. Tommi Mäkinen (FIN) Mitsubishi +40,2
5. Marcus Grönholm (FIN) Peugeot +1.51,7
6. Gilles Panizzi (FRA) Peugeot +2.10,9
7. Francois Delecour (FRA) Peugeot +3.06,4
8. Freddy Loix (BEL) Mitsubishi +4.12,5
9. Andrea Navarra (ITA) Toyota +5.05,4
10. Markko Märtin (EST) Toyota +5.29,0
11. Armin Schwarz (GER) Skoda +5.32,1
12. Henrik Lundgaard (DEN) Toyota +6.43,7
13. Didier Auriol (FRA) Seat +6.58,0
