WELLINGTON, 17 April 2004 — World champion Petter Solberg regained the lead in the New Zealand Rally at the end of yesterday’s first leg after a day-long battle with his Peugeot rivals.
The Norwegian’s Subaru was five seconds clear of Finland’s Harri Rovanpera after nine stages on the gravel roads north of Auckland and 31 clear of twice world champion Marcus Gronholm.
“I’m happy, we’ve had no major problems at all today,” said Solberg. “We’ve had a good battle with Harri today but leg one is just a warm-up. We’ll see what happens tomorrow. That’s when the real rally starts.”
Gronholm had edged ahead of Solberg after the fifth stage but rolled his Peugeot 307 on the last corner of the sixth, sustaining minor damage and losing almost 40 seconds as he dropped to fourth place.
The Finn, who had to drive with a cloud of dust coming through the broken passenger window after the impact, had almost rolled on exactly the same corner last year.
Rovanpera claimed his first win of the rally on that stage and took a one second lead over Solberg with a charge through the longest seventh run of the day before the Norwegian recovered in the closing sprints.
Solberg had an uncomfortable start to the day when his Subaru’s exhaust system was knocked closer to the spare tire, sending fumes into the car and irritating the Norwegian’s eyes.
Estonian Markko Martin, winner of the last rally in Mexico and joint championship leader with Citroen’s Sebastien Loeb, was running fourth in the Ford Focus RS WRC04 and right behind the recovering Gronholm.
Loeb, winner of the season’s first two rallies and overall runner-up last year, moved up to fifth place.
Martin said he was slowed by a poor tire choice as well as having to run second on the road, sweeping the loose gravel for the cars following him. “I’m okay — the car is okay — but I was sliding around too much to be able to set a good time,” he told the official WRC website after the seventh stage.
