ERC: Madeira day four summary

The 7th Round of The European Rally Championships - Thiry still leads...
Three drivers within 4.1 secs....

With four of the days 10 stages completed, Bruno Thiry continues to lead in the Rali Vinho da Madeira but his advantage is now just 1.7 secs over Miguel Campos with Renato Travaglia narrowing the gap to the leader to just 4.1 secs.

Stage four saw Campos set a time of 8min 32.4sec which was good enough to win the stage. Thiry set 8min 32.5sec and Travaglia was just behind in 8min 33.2sec. Manfred Stohl decided to warm his tyres up before the stage, he reved the engine, blew the turbo and was unable to start the stage, so within 3 stages, two of the top names were out...the other being Evgeny Vasin who crashed 4kms into Stage 2.

The rally was delayed by over 30 minutes before the start of Stage 5 because a small heath fire caused smoke to blow over the stage. The local fire brigade were soon on the scene and quickly had it under control.

Whether the heat reminded Travaglia of home is hard to say, but he drove an inspired Stage 5 and won in a time of 11min 49.3sec. Campos was second in 11min 52.7sec with Thiry third in 11min 53.9sec. These three have now opened a gap of over 40 seconds to the remaining WRC`s.

Drivers Comments

Bruno Thiry - Peugeot 206 WRC.

We had a problem with fuel pressure on Stage 5 and had a misfire but I think we have now solved the problem. (At service the turbo was changed and they believed the temperature of the fuel was to high)

Miguel Campos - Peugeot 206 WRC

Its getting very hot and we are making a small change to the set-up. We will need to be careful and try and save the tyres as much as possible as we have 4 stages before we have service again.

Renato Travaglia - Peugeot 206 WRC

The last two stages were better but we still have a problem with the tyres. I have a better feeling with the car now.

Patrick Snijers - Subaru Impreza WRC

I made a mistake on Stage 4 and lost about 10 seconds and then on Stage 5 the turbo was not working as it should.

Henrik Lundgaard still complained about fuel pump problems but Procar, the Italian company who are running the car, explained that a micro chip which fed fuel levels to the engine gave false information when going round a corner. They came with an Italian solution to the problem...they bypassed the chip so that when there was 10 ltrs fuel in the tank it read 10 ltrs.

The teams now have 4 stages totalling 43.37 kms before they return to service again at 1645hrs. Therefore tyre wear will be of crucial importance to the teams.