We looked at the results of the Vodafone Rally of Portugal after the first proper stage of the rally, and the significance was far more dramatic than even the live television images had been. The top ten cars on the rally were all Super 2000s. Guest driver Juho Hanninen was the top orthodox Group N driver, his Evo IX in eleventh place... Aigner was 12th, Sousa was 14th, Araujo had retired with engine failure and Andreucci withdrew before the start. The one major difference about the IRC is the Super 2000 presence, even if it is limited to just Peugeot and Fiat, so the cars and their sounds were different. In Portugal there were 17 Super 2000 cars at the start. Fiat was represented by Giandomenico Basso, Anton Alen, Francois Duval, Dani Sola, Jose Pedro Fontes and the great Didier Auriol. Peugeot had more drivers. Nicolas Vouilloz, Freddy Loix and new driver Miguel Campos, who won the BF Goodrich contest, were the drivers for Peugeot Benelux Team. Luca Rossetti, Jan Kopecky, the Hungarian Janos Toth, Brice Tirabassi, Bruno Magalhaes and ex-OMV driver Manfred Stohl were in for Peugeot with a chance of winning.

In Portugal, Italian magic was everywhere. Car 10, the Peugeot 207 S2000 of the formula pace setter Luca Rossetti, took the start of the rally proudly displaying a French immatriculation plate on the front and an Italian one on the rear! The Ralliart Italia team brought not one nor two cars for Portuguese driver Armindo Araujo but three. Two of them proudly displayed number 14, the third was a mock-up of the Evo X which he hopes to use art the end of the year. He retired after completing just one stage. And what about Abarth and the little pre-rally problem of Giandomenico Basso? Well, Basso crashed on his test on Monday afternoon after a tyre deflated on a fast stretch of road. Monday evening saw old spare car loaded on a trailer, together with sufficient spares to do a rebuild, and two drivers set of from Turin at 2200. Driving nonstop they arrived in Faro at the other end of Europe at 0300 Wednesday morning. The car was the prepared ready for the rally, like nothing amiss had happened, at Shakedown on Thursday morning. "It was all a little bit like things used to be", joked Abarth team manager Nic Gullino. Cannot wait for the Italians to be back in the world championship again.
The group N cars had regained some position compared to Super 2000 until the end of the first leg. Rossetii was leading in front of Vouilloz with 2,4 seconds with Francois Duval in third place. Kopecky was in fourth place in front of Didier Auriol and Tirabassi. The first group N diven by Hanninen was in 7th place followed by Magalhaes, Basso, Campos, Sola and Manfred Stohl. The first group A car, the Citroen C2R2 driven by Simon Jean Joseph was classified on 15th place.

The main retirements of the day were those of Freddy Loix which had two punctures and no spare wheel in stage 6, Anton Alen with broken transmission, Bernardo Sousa with engine in stage 7 and Janos Toth with broken alternator.

3mmm
photo 1: The S2000 armada in Portugal
photo 2: Rossetti - Peugeot leader after leg 1
photo 3: Didier Auriol