- First day of the Canary

After the first day of Rally Canarias, the fourth round of the Interncontinental Rally Challenge series, the first two places belong to the crews of Skoda Motorsport. Jan Kopecky is leading; Juho Hänninen is 13.4 seconds behind and in third place is another Fabia Super 2000 driven by Guy Wilks from Skoda UK Motorsport, behind Jan by 31.4seconds.

With pleasant ocean-side weather, cloudy but no rain and temperatures about 21 degrees, the drivers have covered 129 kilometres, split into 3 sections and 8 special stages. The last of Friday´s stages, SS9, was cancelled due to concerns about lack of spectator discipline.

All the leading drivers are competing for the first time in the Canary Islands. Until the last of today´s stages, Kris Meeke led but had a puncture and lost almost 2 minutes.  Each of the drivers behind Meeke moved up a place as a result.

Tomorrow, the rally continues with six stages and finishes at about 1700 CET.

Jan Kopecky:„It´s a nice rally, beautiful stages with a lot of spectators, but the mountain roads are difficult with lots of twists and turns.  We will try to keep the same tempo tomorrow.“

Juho Hänninen:„I can´t be disappointed. I have better times now than on my last Tarmac rally and I didn´t make any mistakes today. Today, only the pure Tarmac drivers have been better than me.“

Guy Wilks:„It is our first time rallying on Gran Canaria and our first full asphalt rally in a Fabia S2000. Thé stages are very fast and the pace of the event extremely hot, so I´m quite pleased to finish Day 1 in third position.“