The Marlboro Mitsubishi Ralliart crews of Jani Paasonen/Arto Kapanen and Alister McRae/David Senior finished the opening leg of Rally Finland in 13th and 17th positions respectively. In the debut competitive outing of the Lancer Evolution WRC2, the crews have closed the gap to the opposition, but the team suffered disappointment when François Delecour/Daniel Grataloup were forced into retirement in the penultimate stage of the day.

After last night’s super special stage, the 77 crews contesting Rally Finland headed into the forests this morning for the first full day of competition. The route, which covered a total of nine stages over 128.61 competitive kilometres, took the contenders to the north of Jyväskylä, where clear blue skies and warm temperatures greeted them, drawing the fanatical Finns out in their thousands. Few were disappointed by the world-class action, although many were doubtless surprised by the pace of Richard Burns in the face of such stiff local opposition.

Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution WRC2 Marlboro Mitsubishi Ralliart A. McRae / D. Senior

Jani Paasonen and Arto Kapanen have led the assault for Marlboro Mitsubishi Ralliart throughout the day, the Finns capitalising on their local knowledge to hold an early ninth position ahead of former World Champions Carlos Sainz and Tommi Mäkinen. An over-cautious approach to the middle group of two stages lost them time however, and they ultimately returned to Jyvaskyla in 13th position.

"We are still learning so much, but the feeling with the car is very good and I am happy with our day", said Jani. "Tomorrow will be better I think. The roads are wider and faster and it will be good. Third position on the road for us is not ideal, but I’m not thinking about that. Today has been maximum attack minus, tomorrow it must be half-minus!"

Team-mates Alister McRae and David Senior have enjoyed a relatively trouble-free day and are pleased with the performance of the new evolution of Mitsubishi’s World Rally Car, although a degree of oversteer this morning necessitated adjustments to the transmission settings. The Scot also suffered with a damper fluid leak in stage six and a broken front shock absorber in stage nine. "The car is a definite improvement, it seems about half a second a kilometre quicker", said Alister. "Everyone keeps making steps forward though, so we must improve more and more all the time. Today has been quite fast, challenging and technical and apart from our mistake earlier when we landed heavily going too fast over a jump, and the front damper breaking, the car has been great. Tomorrow we’ll continue to push hard and try and improve our times. Seventeenth on the road, where we are, should be good for us though, especially if it stays dry".

Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution WRC2 Marlboro Mitsubishi Ralliart F. Delecour / D. Grataloup

Mitsubishi Motors drivers have made an electrifying start to Rally Finland, for Mitsubishi Lancer Evolutions and Carisma GTs hold nine of the first 10 places in the Production car class on the sixth round of the 2002 FIA Production Car World Rally Championship. Finnish drivers top the leaderboard, holding the first three places, with Jukka Ketomäki just ahead of Juha Salo, but Argentina’s Marcos Ligato leads the Championship contenders in fourth place in his Lancer Evolution.

Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution Gr.N J. Ketomäki / J. Alanen