After a thrilling opening day of the 45th Rally Principe de Asturias yesterday, Abarth factory driver Giandomenico Basso (top) goes into today's final leg as the overnight leader; meanwhile local star Miguel Fuster (above) is in a strong sixth place.

After 161 competitive kilometres, the 45th Principe de Asturias Rally came to a thrilling conclusion at the end of day one yesterday, with Peugeot Belgium driver Nicolas Vouilloz and Abarth driver Giandomenico Basso both tied for the lead on exactly the same time! This is the first time such a situation has occurred in the history of the IRC

Theoretically speaking, Basso is the leader as the rules state that in the case of a tie the driver with the quickest time on the first stage leads – which was Basso. However, both drivers have put in a superlative performance throughout the day, with Basso leading for the first three stages and Vouilloz taking over the lead from SS4.

In third place overnight was Peugeot Belgium’s Freddy Loix – who won the final two stages of the day thanks to an audacious tyre choice. Yesterday’s nine stages were dominated by uncertain weather conditions in the north-west of Spain, which meant that crews had to second-guess when and how heavily it would rain.

Both Basso and Vouilloz were generally happy with their tyre choices throughout the day, which showed in their evenly-matched pace, but Loix made an inspired decision for the final loop of stages by being the only person to choose slick tyres on a drying surface.

The pace of the leading trio showed in the fact that they were nearly a minute and a half ahead of the fourth-placed man, former Junior World Rally Champion and local hero Dani Sola (Abarth), at the end of the leg. Sola made his way steadily up the field throughout the day, having enjoyed an intense battle with his countryman – and reigning IRC champion – Enrique Garcia Ojeda (Peugeot Spain). Just behind them was another local expert, Abarth driver Miguel Fuster.

It was an extremely impressive day for Abarth’s second factory driver, Anton Alén, as well. Despite the fact that this was the first time he had ever driven the Grande Punto S2000 on wet asphalt, he steered clear of major problems all day – having run consistently at the fringes of the top six. Spaniard Luis Monzon rounded off the top points-scoring eight after a solid performance. Another local man, Alberto Hevia, was also very competitive in his Mitsubishi, claiming fourth overall at the start of the event when the rain was at its worst.

Despite the treacherous nature of the conditions, most drivers managed to keep their cars on the road. The first retirement of the day was the Honda Civic Type R R3 of Alessandro Bettega, which stopped with an alternator problem after the opening stage. Another casualty of the event – also in the IRC 2WD Cup category – was the class points leader, Marco Cavigioli. The Italian slid off the road on SS7 without damaging his car, but the radiator broke as he was trying to regain the stage. This left Peugeot 206 XS driver Miguel Arias leading the IRC 2WD Cup from the similar car of Alberto Monarri.

Overall results after SS9 (leg one):

1 Basso 1h32m46.3s
2 Vouilloz +0.0
3 Loix +24.2s
4 Sola +1m23.1s
5 Garcia +1m37.1s
6 Fuster +2m19.6s
7 Alén +2m46.8s
8 Monzon +3m16.6s