“It's been a great year in a way and now everything is coming together – me, the car, all the details. The stages are terrible but I'm really happy with what I've done so far. The times are there, now we've got to do with rally with no major problems,” said an enthusiastic Solberg at the end of the Friday running.
Although ending the first half of Day 1 in 2nd place, Citroen's Sebastien Ogier dropped to 3rd overall after only 3 stages, losing no less than 15 seconds to Hirvonen. He did however manage to end the day ahead of the second Ford driver Jari-Matti Latvala, who is now only 1.1 seconds behind the Frenchman.
After a decently successful morning in Japan, Dani Sordo started to lose time to leader Solberg and to the other 3 drivers in front of him stage after stage, having to settle for the 5th best time, 36 seconds off the leading pace. However, he did not struggle as much as his former teammate and reigning champion Sebastien Loeb, who doesn't seem to turn things around in the Asian event.
After losing more than 36 seconds to Solberg in the first 5 stages of the rally, his time deficit towards the leader is now 54.4 seconds.
“It was a really difficult day for me. I have no answer. I've been pushing hard. The road position is the only thing - I will have a better road position but I'm not sure how much of the difference is the road position and how much is my driving. We'll see tomorrow,” said Loeb.
The other Top 10 positions remained the same at the end of the last 5 stages of the afternoon, starting with Stobart Ford's duo Henning Solberg and Matthew Wilson and ending with Munchi's Federico Villagra and Citroen Junior's Kimi Raikkonen.
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