Giandomenico Basso, at the wheel of a privately-entered D'Ambra team Grande Punto Abarth, has taken a comfortable victory in the 40th Rally Bulgaria today, his third win on the event while marco Cavigioli was in twelfth position in his Trico Motor Sport-run example when the rally was stopped after a fatal accident.

Tragedy struck the rally this morning when a heavy crash stopped the first stage of the day. In SS7 “Sestrimo” (23.68 km) Brian Lavio and Flavio Guglielmini driving a Peugeot 207 S2000 suffered an incident that killed co-driver Guglielmini. The stages and the cars were stopped immediately and driver Lavio was taken to the hospital in an ambulance where he reportedly was only suffering minor injuries.

Basso had started off yesterday in blistering form and stood confidently in first place in the general standings at the end of day one last night having won all six of the special stages of the day. During the last one Slavovitsa (18,.2 km) Basso slowed down a little bit but finished the stage in 10 minutes 12.4 seconds leaving his closest challenger Krum Donchev 2.3 seconds behind him. Third on that stage was Michal Solowow, 11.2 sec. behind. Corrado Fontana was 14.8 seconds behind the leader, followed by Dimitar Iliev and Jasen Popov with both drivers less than a second behind the Italian.

It all meant that Basso led in the general standings overnight with a time of 1 hour 17 minutes and 18.6 seconds with ERC title chasing rival Donchev 1 minute and 2.6 seconds behind while another contender for the European crown, Fontana, was more than 30 seconds behind him. “It is very warm, I am very tired," said Basso as the cars drove into overnight parc ferme. "I hope to win, but I am used to never underestimating my opponents. We drove to the limit of our abilities today, we will try to give it our all tomorrow as well. The biggest challenge for us tomorrow will be the new parts of the course. This year the sections are much better. I hope to keep my position tomorrow.” The fourth driver into parc ferme last night was Solowow, the Pole, who was the clear ERC points leader going into the event, was now 1:50.9 min behind the leader while Iliev was fifth, 2:12.6 min adrift of Basso. The list of the top six first drivers at the completion of day one was completed by Popov, who was a massive 2:21.7 min behind Basso. Another ERC title hopeful, Luca Betti, had dropped down to seventh place and was 2:25.5 behind Basso last night, but his rally was to prematurely end this morning with gearbox problems before the first stage had even kicked off.

Basso, who has been driving a Grande Punto Abarth on the event that was prepared by the private Spanish team D'Ambra, swung into action again this morning on the first stage of the day, SS7, with another blistering time, the Italian easily going fastest, 12.5 seconds quicker than Dimitar managed on his pass though the test, while Fontana and Donchev lost 21.2 and 25.8 seconds respectively to the Grande Punto Abarth driver. Tragedy soon struck though when Lavio/Guglielmini went through and crashed heavily and so the rally's remaining stages were immediately cancelled. In meant a third success on the Rally Bulgaria for Basso who has joined Antonio Zanini (1979, 1980, 1983) and Enriko Bertone (1995, 1996 and 1999) in having won this rally three times. Reigning IRC 2WD Cup champion Marco Cavigioli contested the rally in a Grande Punto Abarth prepared by Trico Motor Sport and he posted times at the tail end of the top-10 and was in twelfth place overall at the end of SS7 when the rally was stopped. The privately entered Fiat Punto S1600 of local driver Ivan Ganchev had moved up to fifteenth place and was still an excellent second in class (A/6) at the conclusion of SS7.

Basso thus collects 13 points from the Rally Bulgaria (10 points for the win and three points for being the leader at the end of day one) which coupled to the two 15 points scores he has already on the Rally Mille Miglia and Belgium Ypres Rally puts him on 43 points after 5 rounds and vaults him up to the top of the standings where he is now equal with the title leader going into this round, Solowow, (who collected just 4 points in Bulgaria, and Donchev, who added an extra 10 points to be the other big points gainer alongside Basso. In fourth place in the championship classification is Fontana, who picked up 7 points this weekend, while in fifth place Luca Betti remains on 31 points after he retired from the event this morning. However Basso's ambitions for the ERC title are further strengthened by the fact that he has scored his 43 points total from just three events while Solowow, Donchev and Betti have all collected points on each of the five rounds held so far meaning that they will soon begin having to drop scores. The next and sixth round of the ERC will be the Ralli Madeira (July 30 - August 2) which Basso will be in action on as part of the factory Abarth squad as the island event also counts towards the Intercontinental rally Challenge.