Returning to the scene where he first scored a rally win in the World Rally Championship, the Frenchman topped the timing reports at the end of the 3-mile stage, edging teammate Sebastien Loeb by only one tenth of a second. The Top 3 was completed by Ford's Jari-Matti Latvala, who came out 2 tenths of a second short of Loeb's stage time.
The Rally Portugal shakedown was held late yesterday in order to make room for the event's first super stage in capital Lisbon on Thursday. It also gave the competitors a chance to evaluate the road conditions and make all the necessary setup changes before tomorrow's official start.
The shakedown classification saw a couple of privateers following the Top 3, namely Petter Solberg (debuting a new color scheme on his DS3 WRC) and Mads Ostberg, while championship leader Mikko Hirvonen had to settle for the 6th best time of the day. The Top 10 was then completed by M-Sport Stobart teammates Henning Solberg and Matthew Wilson, followed by Kimi Raikkonen and Federico Villagra.
The Wednesday running in Portugal witnessed the return of the Mini John Cooper Works S2000 onto the roads of the WRC, with local hero Armindo Araujo and Brazil's Daniel Oliveira running them for the first time this year. While the latter went off the road for a short period of time – his car was not damaged in the process – Araujo finished the shakedown 10.4 seconds off the pace in his Motorsport Italia-run entry.
The session was also marked by a big accident from Monster Ford's Ken Block, who lost control of his Fiesta RS WRC one mile into the shakedown stage and rolled it 5 times. Both him and his co-driver Alex Gelsomino were taken to hospital for precautionary checks.
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