After a day of mixed surface conditions Abarth factory driver Giandomenico Basso takes a half minute advantage at the front into today's final stages of the Rali Vinho da Madeira. The Italian is making his first appearance in the IRC this year in Madeira and was only drafted in to bolster Abarth’s championship push in the series, a role he fulfilled perfectly as he ended the day with a 27-second advantage over Mitsubishi’s Renato Travaglia in second.

Basso - the winner of last year's Madeira Rally - had wrested the lead of the event, a position he would hold all day, as the cars went into their first service halt after three stages. Renato Travaglia was the early leader, and the winner of Thursday's SS1 'superspecial' stage but lost his advantage with a spin on SS3. Nonetheless, he maintained second place. "There was a lot of water on the stages and the car just got away from me," explained Travaglia. "I lost 20 or 30 seconds as I had to engage reverse gear and get myself pointing in the right direction."

Basso then took over the rally lead, in mixed conditions that are typical of Madeira's tropical climate. "We only had fully dry roads for the last 10 kilometres of SS3" he said. "It's not been an easy start." In third place was the Peugeot of Enrique Ojeda, who opted for fully cut slick tyres all round: an excellent choice in the varied road conditions. A more original solution was adopted by Bernd Casier, who had cut slicks on the back and full wet tyres on the front. The choice was not a bad one: the Peugeot Belgium driver was currently fifth behind privateer Abarth driver Corrado Fontana.

Others were not so lucky: Abarth's Andrea Navarra has already retired with a car that would not start this morning, while there were more problems for a variety of his rivals. Freddy Loix set fourth-fastest time on SS2, but was slowed down by what he thought was a differential problem with his Grande Punto Abarth on SS3. The former World Rally Championship star lost a minute and a half before retiring on the road section after the service halt. There were problems also for Nicolas Vouilloz: the Peugeot driver was down in 51st place as the result of clutch problems. Local man Bruno Magalhães has been held back by an electrical fault, causing his car to fire on only three cylinders.

As the cars left the service park, the weather over the next loop of two stages was to pose the biggest problem. While there were still patches of damp and fog on SS4, the following stage was largely dry. This allowed Simon Jean-Joseph to set sixth-fastest time in his two-wheel drive Citroen C2 Super 1600, against four-wheel drive, 2.0 litre opposition. "I had a good tyre choice and a large part of the stage ran downhill, which is why we were able to make up the performance deficit," said Jean-Joseph. The Frenchman is now seventh overall and top two-wheel drive car.

There was little change at the top: Basso still led by 18 seconds from Travaglia, while Ojeda was edging closer in third - thanks to his second-fastest time on SS5. Ojeda's team mate Vouilloz proved that his clutch problems were well and truly behind him by setting fastest time on SS4. Nonetheless, the Frenchman still had a mountain to climb from 35th place. Another Peugeot to successfully recover from its earlier problems was the 207 of local man Magalhães.
 

The Portuguese driver lost time with an electrical problem in the morning that prevented the spark plugs from firing properly, but was now back up to 15th and setting times comparable to those of the frontrunners. Magalhães then went even better and set fastest time in on SS8, by nearly 10 seconds from the similar car of Vouilloz. The leader though remained Basso. The Italian had a scare over the last loop of two stages when his gearbox began to fail. The Abarth mechanics changed the box in 12 minutes, and Basso was straight back in business. Travaglia, driving a Mitsubishi, was just 10.2 seconds behind Basso. He commented: "I'm pushing as hard as I can to catch Giandomenico, and I've made a few changes to the car set-up that I hope will help. It's not quite enough though: I'm on the limit all the time."

Citroen's Simon Jean-Joseph had a lucky escape on SS7, when he braked too late for a slippery corner and ploughed straight on, damaging the front of the car. "It was my fault, but the road was actually quite greasy," said the Citroen driver. "We got away with it and didn't lose too much time: it's good that luck can be on our side sometimes as well!" Jean-Joseph was still in a points-scoring eighth place, while Peugeot's Enrique Ojeda was happy to hold station in third. "It's a good position for the title race, particularly as Andrea Navarra had had problems," said the Spaniard. "But there's still a long way to go and we have to stay concentrated." The leading positioned remained the same over the final two stages.

The rally finishes with nine special stages today, starting at 0740. Between the stages, there will be two service halts at the harbour side in Funchal. After the opening loop of two stages and service, there will then be a loop of three stages followed by service. To conclude the rally, the final loop consists of a mammoth four consecutive stages. The finish podium takes place at 1813, making Saturday a long and extremely demanding day of rallying. The stages will once more be extremely varied, with a wide range of weather conditions expected once more. With some long loops of consecutive stages, the correct tyre choice will be a key factor in maintaining a consistent performance. The battle is still far from over, as with the lead closely poised, the crews will fight it out over 133.83 remaining competitive kilometres.

48th Rally Vinho da Madeira; IRC results, End of Leg One: 1 Giandomenico Basso/Mitia Dotta Abarth Grande Punto 1h40m14.9s; 2 Renato Travaglia/Lorenzo Granai Mitsubishi Lancer Evo 9 +27.1s; 3 Enrique Ojeda/Jordi Costa Peugeot 207 S2000 +1m11.7s; 4 Bruno Magalhaes/Paulo Grave Peugeot 207 S2000 +1m24.6s; 5 Jose Fontes/Fernando Prata Abarth Grande Punto +2m53.9s; 6 Bernd Casier/Frederic Miclotte Abarth Grande Punto +3m47.3s; 7 Simon Jean-Joseph/Jack Boyere Citroen C2 Super 1600 +4m03.6s; 8 Corrado Fontana/Renzo Casazza Abarth Grande Punto +4m07.4s; 9 Alexandre Camacho/Rui Abreu Peugeot 206 S1600 +4m15.1s; 10 Tomas Czopik/Lukasz Wronski Abarth Grande Punto +5m02.8s