Sanremo turmoil affects Hyundai.

After the ceremonial start on the tree-lined promenade of Sanremo at dusk Thursday night, the eleventh round of the FIA World Rally Championship, Rallye Sanremo, got underway yesterday morning with Hyundai Castrol World Rally Team crew Alister McRae and David Senior driving a determined day, and after an unfortunate off-road excursion, brought their Accent WRC? to overnight parc ferme in 56th position overall.

As was expected, competition was fierce with the French manufacturers dominating and securing the top six positions over the 138 competitive kilometres of leg one. Championship contenders were kept away from the head of the field by tarmac experts Jesus Puras, Philippe Bugalski (both Citroen) and last years winner Gilles Panizzi (Peugeot), who set the fastest stage times for the duration of the day.

The leg's opening stage, the 12.41km Coldirodi 1, was the setting for a number of surprise retirements and saw an even larger number of competitors with significant problems, preventing the possibility of a serious challenge to the French leaders. Hyundai's British crew McRae and Senior, suffered misfortune on the penultimate stage of the day, and despite experiencing no mechanical problems, the pair beached their Accent WRC? on a wall and lost time trying to get back onto the road.

"About two kilometres before the end of stage six we understeered into a corner, the car went sideways, struck a wall, the front spun around and we landed on top of the wall. There were no spectators around so we had to find someone to help us get the car back on the road and lost ten minutes doing so," explained McRae. "We broke the rear right lower control arm so had to finish the stage carefully and run the last stage slowly as well, which lost us a lot more time as well," he continued.

Despite dropping down the order considerably, the British pair were still running ninth in the manufacturer cars nominated for points, and considering the volume of problems incurred during the first day, anything could happen today. "There are actually only nine manufacturer cars left in the event so if we can continue tomorrow as we did for the best part of today, then there is still a chance for us gain points for Hyundai," concluded the Scot.

Italian team-mates and winners of the '95 event, Piero Liatti and Carlo Cassina were forced into retirement after crashing their Accent WRC? in the opening stage of the day on their fourth outing this year with the Korean marque. "We were about one kilometre from the end of special stage one, accelerating into a right-hand corner in fourth gear and the front right-hand corner of the car touched the Armco barrier at 100-120kph; we bounced off it and hit a wall on the next immediate left-hand corner, breaking both front and rear left wheels," explained Liatti. "I'm obviously disappointed as this is my home event and I wanted to get as much mileage as possible before the final asphalt event of the season. It was just a really unfortunate error on my part and I'm sorry I'm not able to get a better result for the team."

Leg two, the longest of the rally, starts at 06:00hrs taking crews back to the same stages as leg one north of the Sanremo rally base, with the opening and closing triplet of stages featuring a few added kilometres but run in reverse, totalling 142 kilometres, before returning to parc ferme at 20:02hrs.

News from Hyundai's rivals:

The first leg of the rally began dramatically with three leading retirements on the opening stage. Championship contender and winner of the recent Rally New Zealand, Richard Burns (Subaru), saw his rally come to an end only four kilometres into the first stage when his Impreza went off the road too far to rejoin; Skoda's Armin Schwarz managed to complete the first stage but reached the finish with a broken alternator, ending his event.

Tommi Makinen and Freddy Loix both experienced problems after a fault on an electrical component affected the differential locking on their recently-launched Mitsubishi Lancer Evo WRC's. Electrical problems also hindered current joint championship leader Colin McRae causing the wheels on his Ford to lock intermittently.

At the head of the field, Citroen's Jesus Puras and Peugeot's Gilles Panizzi shared the lead throughout the day, with the Citroen driver edging away by only 1.5 seconds by the end of the leg. Philippe Bugalski (Citroen), Didier Auriol (Peugeot) and Sebastien Loeb, who regularly drives the Super 1600 Citroen Saxo, swapping into a Xsara WRC for this event, completes the top five positions.