Rally Portugal 2000
Subaru introduced the new evolution of the Impreza at Rally Portugal. The new version is said to be 90% new and Juha Kankkunen was joking during the shakedown test that the remaining 10% are the drivers.
The rally started on Thursday evening with a super special driven at Baltar kart track. Marcus Gronholm with the Peugeot 206 was fastest, but the differences were marginal, as expected. The real action started Friday morning with the Fafe stage that includes the perhaps most famous jump of the series. Colin McRae was fastest and took the lead with his team-mate Carlos Sainz second and Richard Burns third. The second stage of the day (SS3) was won by Burns with the new Impreza. McRae stayed in the lead, but only barely.
SS4 was won again by Burns, who moved into the lead with a nice margin of 20 secs. Sainz was still second, but behind him the time differences were really small. McRae suffered from steering problems and dropped to 4th behind Marcus Gronholm on 3rd place. Early surprises were been Harri Rovanpera, the former Seat driver who entered the rally with a private Grifone Toyota and is 5th after SS4, and Kenneth Eriksson with the Hyundai, who was keeping up with the pace in 8th position.
First retirees were Juha Kankkunen who had an off on SS4 and damaged the suspension of his Subaru and Hyundai driver Alister McRae, retiring with technical problems. Tommi Mäkinen is struggling with problems and has lost already a minute to the leaders.
 |
| Richard Burns at the Fafe jumps (Photo by SWRT) |
The three morning stages were run again in the afternoon so SS5 was again at Fafe. McRae was fastest and took back the 2nd position. Sainz and Delecour lost time with problems on stage 7. Burns was charging and extended his lead to 40 secs. Makinen also had found the speed and was running in 8th place at the same speed as the leaders. Gronholm and McRae were now battling over the 2nd place and 20 secs behind them there were five drivers fighting each other within ten seconds.
Burns developed a power steering problem on SS 8 and lost 15 secs to Gronholm who won the stage. Burns' problems continued on SS9 and Gronholm moved into the lead. Makinen hit a tree and retired with damged suspension. Also McRae was forced to retire because of blown engine. Rovanpera was now superbly in third place, followed by Sainz and Auriol. 6th was Norwegian Ford driver Petter Solberg.
On SS10 Burns again lost half a minute to Gronholm and dropped to 3th position behind stage winner Sainz. Rovanpera lost a position and continues 4th 13 secs behind Sainz. Solberg is battling with Auriol and took 5th place from the Frenchman. The short Lousada super special finished the eventful day with no further drama.
Situation after stage 11 of 23:
1. Marcus Grönholm (FIN) Peugeot +1.50.28,6
2. Carlos Sainz (ESP) Ford +28,6
3. Richard Burns (ENG) Subaru +42,6
4. Harri Rovanperä (FIN) Toyota +43,0
5. Petter Solberg (NOR) Ford +47,3
6. Didier Auriol (FRA) Seat +52,6
7. Markko Märtin (EST) Toyota +1.16,7
8. Francois Delecour (FRA) Peugeot +1.23,3
9. Kenneth Eriksson (SWE) Hyundai +1.26,9
10. Adruzilo Lopes (POR) Peugeot +1.43,8
