Citroen: World Rally Championship Report from Japan

10/26/2007 -- Following Friday evening's official start ceremony, the 2007 Rally Japan began in earnest this morning at 6pm as crews started to leave the service park with dawn just about breaking and temperatures hovering around the 0°C mark. The morning's menu featured four stages totalling 51.74km and conditions were icy in places, prompting Citroën's Sébastien Loeb/Daniel Elena and Dani Sordo/Marc Martí to equip their respective C4 WRCs with soft compound BFGoodrich tyres.

Sébastien and Daniel were both immediately on the pace and only dropped four tenths of a second to the leader on SS1 but then lost a little more time (12.3s) on the treacherously icy and narrow SS2. The third stage saw them secure their first fastest time of the weekend which enabled them to make up some of the ground lost on the day's second test to end the morning just 6.1s behind the leader.

Conditions were further complicated by thick fog and Dani and Marc started the day cautiously. After two quick times on the first two tests, they made a mistake on SS3 but concluded the loop a little better by scoring the best time on SS4.

As it stands, Sébastien Loeb and Daniel Elena are currently third overall, while the other Citroën Total C4 WRC is fifth in the hands of Dani and Marc, 26.7s down on the leader. After the 30-minute lunchtime service halt, crews will tackle the same sequence of four stages before rounding off the day with two attempts at the Obihiro super-special.

Guy Fréquelin: "We're off to a good start, although fog and ice made this morning's run fairly tricky. Sébastien and Daniel came through it well and only dropped a little time on SS2. The gaps are still small, however, and Marcus Grönholm's mistake on SS4 means that both our cars are ahead of him for the moment. Dani doesn't know this event well but he and Marc got off to a quick start and are running in a good position. With the first four stages behind us, the situation isn't looking too bad, but there are still 23 stages to come, so it promises to be another long weekend…"

Sébastien Loeb: "I have mixed feelings about the way the morning went, although it's obviously nice to be a bit more than 50 seconds clear of Marcus and it's now up to us to build on that gap, or at least stabilise it. My objective this afternoon will be to try to take the lead but we could just as easily make the same sort of mistake. Indeed, I didn't drive well and made a few small errors on SS2. We profited from the service halt to make a few adjustments to the set-up of our C4 along with Citroën Sport's engineers and technical staff and I hope our car will be even more competitive this afternoon."

Dani Sordo: "The stages here aren't easy at the best of times and the cocktail of ice and inconsistent visibility didn't help matters this morning. I preferred to take things easily on SS1 and I preferred not to take any risks either in the freezing conditions encountered on the following test. After that, I was on the pace for the first attempt at today's longest stage and my split times were looking good until a half-spin about 20km in, although I managed to avoid hitting a bridge. We made up for that incident with the fastest time on SS4 and we will now need to keep up the same sort of pace this afternoon."

Source: Automobiles CITROËN