Monte Carlo Rally 2000

The traditional opening of the WRC season, Monte Carlo Rally, this year has only 15 special stages, but among them are some of the longest stages in the championship. All teams attend the rally with their new lineups, except Hyundai, who introduced their Accent WRC earlier this month. Hyundai will start their first WRC season at the Swedish Rally. Peugeot entered Gilles Panizzi and Francois Delecour as their drivers eligible for team points. Marcus Gronholm drives the third Peugeot to gain experience on this very tough rally. Ford sports their new Martini-Ford livery which the team announced this week with an introduction of a new major sponsor, Telefonica Movistar. Toyota is no longer present as an official team, but there were a lot of Toyotas run by private teams on the starting line, the drivers including for example Bruno Thiry.

Leg one:
Panizzi won the first stage, but the lead was taken on the second one by Richard Burns despite spinning on an icy patch and brushing the armco with the back of his Subaru. Winner of the 2nd stage, Tommi Makinen, was 2nd in the rally, 6.2 secs behind Burns, while Panizzi dropped to 3rd, 8.8 secs behind the leader. Then there is a big gap to the fourth place man, Colin McRae, who is almost a minute behind. The rest of the top drivers follow in close vicinity of McRae.

McRae lost some time on SS3 and dropped to 9th position. The early stages were driven on relatively dry roads but the final two stages of the day were quite slippery with long streaks of icy surface. Tommi Makinen picked the right tyres for the last stages and won them both with two dazzling times. At the end of the day Makinen leads the rally by 12.3 secs over Burns. Panizzi is still 3rd, 30.6 secs behind the leader.

Toni Gardemeister was surprisingly fast in the Seat. (Photo by Seat Sport)

Carlos Sainz moved into the fourth place on the final stages, but he is already 1:51 behind Makinen. Sainz is followed by Delecour, Gardemeister, McRae and Kankkunen. Didier Auriol had problems on the final stage and lost several minutes. Delecour later received a one minute penalty for arriviving early to the final service and dropped to ninth.

Leg two:
The second day of the rally started in a dramatic fashion. After a cold night Richard Burns' Subaru and all three Peugeots refused to restart at the parc ferme. The cars just wouldn't fire no matter what the drivers tried. This meant that Burns, Panizzi, Delecour and Gronholm were out, and Tommi Makinen is in a comfortable lead of almost two minutes over Sainz. Seat's Gardemeister was, quite surprisingly, third and Colin McRae fourth.

Then, it was announced that the first stage of the day was called off because there were too many people on the route. The FIA observers made the decision which was later critizised by the rally organizers who thought that it was just normal commotion on the stage before the arrival of the competitors. The cancellation caused a traffic chaos around the stage and because of this rally leader Tommi Makinen also had to take a wrong route to the service after the cancelled stage and he was even threatened with an exclusion from the event.

Makinen still lead the rally after SS7 with a margin of 1:46. Sainz is second and half a minute behind him was Toni Gardemeister. Fourth was Juha Kankkunen, he was fastest on the stage and overtook Colin McRae who was suffering from minor technical problems. Makinen was fastest on the longest stage of the rally, the 48 kilometre SS8, but on SS9 he lost more than thirty seconds with a bad tyre choice, so the margin was now 1:29. Stage nine was won by McRae, who again got into 4th place in front of Kankkunen.

On the final stage of the day Makinen was again fastest, pulling his overnight lead to 1:50. McRae was fast again and he was already pressuring Toni Gardemeister who was in third place after another great drive on the second leg.

Leg three:
Colin McRae continued his charge and moved into third position displacing the young Seat driver on the first stage of the final day (SS11). Carlos Sainz was a few seconds faster than rally leader Tommi Mäkinen, but on stage 12 Mäkinen was fastest and the margin was back to where they started in the morning. McRae extended his gap on Gardemeister to 16 secs. Kankkunen continued in 5th position, half a minute behind Gardemeister.

SS 13 was the infamous Sisteron stage, which was this time run in daylight so it maybe wasn't quite as challenging as in the past when it was driven at night. Anyway, Sainz and Gardemeister were struggling on the stage. Makinen's lead extended to 2:16 and McRae was closing on his Ford team-mate. The Scot was only 13 secs behind Sainz. Kankkunen was fastest on the stage and, pulling a 20 second gap, passed Gardemeister who selected too hard a tyre compound for the stage.

Sainz answered McRae's challenge by posting fastest time on the penultimate stage of the rally (SS14). He was 25 secs faster than Tommi Makinen, but McRae was only three seconds slower. Kankkunen was securing his fourth spot by putting another 10 secs on Gardemeister. Didier Auriol who had been running quite well after his problems on the first day retired with engine problems on SS14. He was 8th, fighting with Bruno Thiry and Freddy Loix for the 6th position.

Tommi Makinen took it easy on the last stage and took his second consecutive win in Monte by 1:24.9. Sainz was fastest on the final stage, but Colin McRae's great charge up the leaderboard ended very disappointedly with a blown engine on the final stage. With McRae's retirement Juha Kankkunen finished third, a good results after his brake problems on earlier legs.

The surprise of the rally was young Seat driver Toni Gardemeister who kept up with the speed of the leaders all through the rally and finished fourth, despite being passed by a couple of world champions on the final day. Another good performance was the fifth place of Bruno Thiry with a privately entered Grifone team Toyota Corolla. The last points scoring position was occupied by Tommi Makinen's team-mate Freddy Loix.

Results:

1. Tommi Mäkinen (FIN) Mitsubishi - 4.23.35,8
2. Carlos Sainz (ESP) Ford +1.24,9
3. Juha Kankkunen (FIN) Subaru +3.21,4
4. Toni Gardemeister (FIN) Seat +3.45,1
5. Bruno Thiry (BEL) Toyota +4.48,4
6. Freddy Loix (BEL) Mitsubishi +7.04,1