Cyprus Rally: Red Bull Skoda leg one summary

After thorough inspection of the two Fabia WRCs at the Limassol service park within the alloted time for repairs of 2:45 hours, the Red Bull Skoda management has decided to retire from Rally Cyprus and forego the possibility of SupeRally.

The electronic problems that occurred in both cars were located, they were caused by overheating; but it would be unjustifiable to restart without prior testing and accept the danger of possible consequential damage.

The team will from now on concentrate on the next WRC event in Turkey, where once again Harri Rovanpera/Risto Pietilainen (FIN) and Andreas Aigner (AUT)/Klaus Wicha (GER) will be in action.

After both Fabia WRCs had retired on the road section between special stages 1 and 2, the cars were hauled to the Limassol service park in the afternoon where the entire team tried feverishly to locate the source of trouble. The alloted time amounted to 2:45 hours. The commitment of the crew's mechanics and engineers paid off as it became clear that serious overheating due to high temperatures and the slow pace in the stage had caused retirement for both cars. At the shakedown the day before, in similar conditions, everything had worked immaculately.

The two team managers Raimund Baumschlager and Armin Schwarz had to make a tough decision: "Despite locating the source of error for both cars we have to forego the possibility of SupeRally. It has become imperative to complete further tests in order to prevent a recurrence of the problem. Since we have to run the same engines in just three weeks' time in Turkey, there's no room for experiments, so sadly we need to abandon the Cyprus event prematurely. Our whole concentration will now apply to the WRC rally in Turkey."

At the top of the standings the battle between a challenging Marcus Gronholm and world champion elect Sebastien Loeb rages on. After the first day, Gronholm leads Loeb by just 6.4 seconds. Manfred Stohl is running in P4.

-credit: red bull skoda