Tour de Corse was this year Toyota's Didier Auriol's show. The winner last year, Francois Delecour, is recovering from injuries he got in a road accident last month. He was replaced by Italian Gianfranco Cunico.
Auriol won all special stages on the first day of the rally, Thursday, and took a firm lead right from the beginning. Second, similarly clearly, was Carlos Sainz of Subaru. Carlos' team mate Colin McRae crashed out on SS 4. 25 secs behind Carlos came Andrea Aghini (Toyota) and 14 secs behind pursuing Aghini was Juha Kankkunen.
On the second stage of the second day the fifth place man Cunico hit a rock fence and caused two of the spectators standing on the fence to fall some 15 meters. They received severe injuries and were hospitalized. Cunico had had troubles with the brakes of his Ford Escort Cosworth all through the first day. He retired after the incident. In the front the situation remained stable. Auriol led Sainz by half a minute and even had time to spin, hit a rock wall and stall the engine. Kankkunen got within 10 secs of Aghini but he also spun and dropped another 10 seconds.
On the last day, Saturday, Auriol had problems with his clutch and Sainz started to close up fast. On the 4th stage of the day Carlos was only 9 secs behind Auriol. But on the next stage Sainz blew a tire in his Subaru and lost almost a minute. So Didier Auriol had just to cruise through the remaining stages to take his 5th victory of Tour de Corse. He has proved to be the undisputable master of the twisty asphalt roads of Corsica.
1. Didier Auriol Toyota 5:57.46 2. Carlos Sainz Subaru -0.56 3. Andrea Aghini Toyota -2.11 4. Juha Kankkunen Toyota -2.43 5. Massimo Biasion Ford -4.47 6. Bruno Thiry Ford -4.59 7. Patrick Bernardini Ford -15.47 8. Jean Ragnotti Renault -19.44 9. Serge Jordan Renault -23.01 10. Marco Massarotto BMW -27.20 The World Rally Championship standing, drivers: 1. Didier Auriol Toyota 47 points 2. Juha Kankkunen Toyota 45 3. Carlos Sainz Subaru 37 4. Massimo Biasion Ford 30 5. Francois Delecour Ford 20 Ian Duncan Toyota 20 7. Kenjiro Shinozuka Mitsubishi 15 8. Andrea Aghini Toyota 12 Bruno Thiry Ford 12 10. Patrick Njiru Toyota 10 The World Rally Championship standing, manufacturers: 1. Toyota 77 points 2. Subaru 58 3. Ford 46 4. Mitsubishi 10 5. Skoda 2
Next event: Acropolis Rally, Greece.
(C) 1994 WRC Infosystem By Petri Karonen (pakar@tukki.jyu.fi). May not be reproduced without author's permission. Permission is automatically granted for non-commercial use provided that the author is notified of the reproduction.