In general, the story of the first two stages has been the tyre choice.

Gronholm has soft compound tyres and Loeb has very soft tyres. Both drivers felt that they were good on the stages.

Hirvonen was disappointed with his performance on the stages, he is half a minute off the pace. His tyres are not ideal and he feels that his driving is not good either.

Petter Solberg is very fed up with his car at the moment, it has the same transmission problem as in Finland which hasn't really been solved. The car is behaving as a rear wheel drive rather than a 4wd.

Atkinson is saying that it's not too bad though the balance of the car is not good. He is finding it not easy to drive.

No 9 Latvala hit a rock at the end of stage 2 hard with the front wheel of the car. It was so severe that the steering wheel spun around in the driver's hand. But fortunately there was no damage of any significance.

Car number two, Sordo, had no problems. He is running the same type of soft tyre as Loeb, again a good choice.

Henning Solberg car number 10, has had no technical problems but had two punctures at the end of stage 1. The mousse inside the tyres that expands when they get a puncture made it hard to drive in the second stage because regulations mean that they can only take one spare tyre. Henning's co-driver is still alive, feeling better today and coping, very relieved that he is okay.

Manfred Stohl, car number 5, hasn't had any problems, but the times aren't good and he isn't very happy about that.

Pons is not comfortable this morning. There is a lot of understeer that makes it difficult, but otherwise no technical problems.

Car number 15, Urmo Aava, it has been a very difficult start. He can't get a good driving rhythm on the stages. The first stage was driven too hard and he was sliding badly on the road then the second stage was driven too calmly. No technical problems at this point.

Car number 16, Mathew Wilson, had the off into the fence. He found that he was able to select reverse and get back onto the road to continue. "Fortunately the farmer has built a good fence and that stopped us going too far off the road." There was some damage to the back of the car but they have no idea how that came about.

Companc, went off on stage one that cost him 6 minutes. "I couldn't get back on the road, so I found another road that brought us back to the special stage." Unfortunately it wasn't that simple to get back on. There was a gate and the co-driver had to get out and open the gate and then get back into the safety belts, costing them more time.

Car number 12's intercom wasn't working on either stages. But otherwise they had no problems.

Next up the group N drivers:

At this time we know that Kamada has had an off and has retired from the rally.