Gronholm survives 'scary moment' to win

Marcus Gronholm admitted that the moment when he tipped his Peugeot on its side during the second leg of the Rally of New Zealand was enough to get him to back off the throttle pedal for the remainder of the race.

“It was a scary moment and a stupid mistake to make as I was under no pressure. Luckily there was no serious damage but it could have been the end of the rally for me,” he said.

Once the Finnish World Rally champion had regained the road he simply cruised on to victory, leading the event from start to finish to come in ahead of team-mate Richard Burns.

Gronholm finished in a combined time of three hours 45 minutes 21.2 seconds, over a minute ahead of Briton Burns.

Burns still leads the overall championship after New Zealand and that means that, when he gets to Argentina next month for the fifth round of the 14-event championship, he will again have to start first on the opening day.

“The wet weather here in New Zealand on Friday meant that this was not the disadvantage that it might have been had it been dry,” he said.

Winter in Argentina can be just as fickle as autumn in New Zealand and so Burns will be hoping for damp conditions on stages that are notoriously sandy.

For Peugeot, New Zealand marked the 22nd win for the 206WRC since its World Championship campaign began 46 rallies ago in 2000.

While Peugeot celebrated victory in the event and snatching the championship lead from arch-rivals Citroen, the Cumbria-based Ford team will also return to Europe on a high note after an impressive showing from its radical new Ford Focus that was completed just in time for the rally.

Although Estonian Markko Martin eventually retired with a surprise engine problem he had been the closest, and in some respects only, challenger to Gronholm’s supremacy for the first half of the rally.

“The performance of the car exceeded all our expectations,” admitted team boss Malcolm Wilson.

“It has given us a fantastic platform to work on and I think we will be looking for great things from the Acropolis Rally in June.”

Ford’s technical director Christian Loriaux was awarded the Inmarsat Star of the Rally award for his achievement in getting the new car to this level of competitiveness so quickly and he has passed on the £3000 cheque to a Downs Syndrome charity.

He explained: “My son Max was wrongly diagnosed with the condition and the week between that initial diagnosis and learning the truth was without doubt the worst week of my life.”

Petter Solberg of Norway finished third behind Gronholm and Burns with Frenchman Sebastien Loeb coming home in fourth.

Fifth place went to Finn Toni Gardemeister, driving a Skoda, while Alister McRae brought a privately entered Mitsubishi home in sixth place.

The British driver has not competed since bruising a kidney last year and his lack of match practice showed clearly for the first half of the event before he finally regained his form.

Finn Tommi Makinen finished seventh, Frenchman Didier Auriol eighth, Francois Duval of Belgium ninth with another Finn, Mikko Hirvonen, completing the top 10.

Burns leads the overall Championship with 26 points after four rounds with Gronholm now just adrift on 20 points.

Loeb and Colin McRae, who was sidelined on the opening day with suspension failure, are joint-third with 18 points while Spaniard Carlos Sainz is fifth with 16 points.