Heading into today's final leg of the 44th Belgium Ypres Rally Giandomenico Basso (top) is upholding Abarth honour having battled up to fourth place by the end of the opening day yesterday although new team mate in the factory Grande Punto Abarth line-up, local star Bernd Casier (bottom), had a torrid start to the rally.

Heading into today's final leg of the 45th Belgium Ypres Rally Giandomenico Basso is upholding Abarth honour having battled up to fourth place by the end of the opening day yesterday although new team mate in the factory Grande Punto Abarth line-up, local star Bernd Casier had a torrid start with a fire extinguisher going off in the cockpit, driveshaft problems and a puncture leaving him rooted in the lower reaches of the top-twenty.

For the fifth round of the Intercontinental Rally Challenge (IRC) a strong performance is required from the Abarth factory team if Basso is to stay in the points hunt for the drivers' championship title. To bolster the Italian's chances team mate Anton Alén has been dropped for the event and in his place comes local expert Casier.

Day one of the Belgium Ypres Rally and the spectators came in large numbers to the Ypres region and to Lille-Metropole to savour the show. The weather was perfect and this allowed the drivers to get the best out of their machines. The first of five stages totalling 118 km that comprised the open evening's action got underway at 18:06 PM yesterday and the 22.57 km Mesen Sauvegarde 1 test immediately saw Casier bedding into the Grande Punto Abarth quickly with fourth quickest time while Basso went through with the eighth fastest scratch time. The second stage (Hollebeke 1, 26.65 km) saw Basso eighth and Casier tenth fastest, which allowed Basso to climb to eighth place and Casier split to ninth on the provisional leaderboard. The third stage was the relatively short, 9.76 km Lille-Eurométropole 1, which saw Basso sixth fastest while slightly slower was Casier in ninth, promoting the pair one position each up the classification. SS4 was the second running of the opening test, Mesen Sauvegarde, and with the start time of 10:00 PM, Basso was again chipping away that the leaderboard in the darkness, going fifth fastest to consolidate his seventh on the overall, while Casier went through the stage with the tenth fastest time reporting that the car was sliding a bit much for his liking and he was trying to get to grips with the issue.

The next stage, the second loop through Hollebeke saw disaster for Casier as a fire extinguisher went off in the Grande Punto Abarth's cockpit and coupled to driveshaft problems it cost him 4 minutes and 19.5 seconds, although Basso was by now starting to turn on the form, going through the 26.65 km stage as the third quickest driver. This moved Basso up to fifth place, and left him just one second off the fourth placed Skoda of Juha Hanninen. However Casier was now in eighteenth place on the leaderboard, and a massive 5 minutes and 16.8 seconds off the rally leader, as the crews went into the final stage of the day, the second pass of the short Lille-Eurométropole test which kicked off at 23:10 PM. Basso went through in the darkness fourth fastest, but importantly was 1.2 seconds quicker than Hanninen which allowed the Abarth driver to move into fourth place overall overnight, with a cushion of just 0.2 seconds over the Skoda pilot. Casier had even more bad luck as a puncture saw him finish the stage 42.8 seconds off the winner's time, and keeping him firmly stuck down in eighteen place.

Basso will start today's ten stages 59.6 seconds off the rally leader and last year's winner Freddie Loix (Peugeot 207 S2000) who also holds the record number of wins on this rally, and who battled for supremacy in Ypres all of yesterday with Kronos team mate Kris Meeke (+4.9 seconds) while third place overnight went to Jan Kopechy (+13.3 seconds) meaning that Basso starts at lunchtime squeezed in a Skoda sandwich. Loix managed to build a lead of 7 seconds during yesterday evening's opening leg over Meeke but then lost two seconds in the dark night of the last stage of the day. Kopecky has conceded only 13 seconds to the two leaders and in fact actually silently sneaked up on them and is ready to pounce if either makes a mistake today.

Behind Basso in fourth and Hanninen in fifth comes Pieter Tsjoen (Peugeot 207 S2000), and all three had a fairly trouble-free run yesterday. Originally, there was a fourth driver fighting in this battle for fourth place, Thierry Neuville. However on the fourth stage he had a spin and on the fifth test made a mistake which suddenly saw him having engine problems. As the oil pressure gauge of the Peugeot 207 S2000 indicated zero, he decided to retire.

There would sure have been some more drivers who could have aimed at a top five spot but this first 'short' day turned out to be pretty lethal for many. The first victim was the top candidate Francois Duval. The Skoda started in hard rubbers whereas Duval himself preferred intermediates. The Czech then took a dive in a ditch at the first corner. Next up was Patrick Snijers. The rev-limiter interfering at 6,500 rpm instead of 8,500 rpm did not help his progress and he was losing tens of seconds before breaking a suspension component after a small accident with his Super2000 VW Polo. Nicolas Vouilloz got caught out on stage one too and lost 2 minutes and 53 seconds which is enough for the IRC title contender to lose all hope of winning the event. The next victim claimed by this same stage was Alex Bengue with a broken engine in the Super2000 Opel Corsa. Guy Wilks would also retire on the same stage during the second run through as he slid into the scenery with another Super2000 debutant machine, this time the Proton Satria. Bernd Casier also did not enjoy a trouble-free run. He was originally positioned 3" behind team leader and 2007 winner Basso. Jasper Van den Heuvel took advantage of the situation by posting his group N car in seventh position ahead of Franz Wittman. Other losers last night were Melissa Debackere (engine failure), Paul Lietaer (broken gearbox) and David Bonjean, who went to camp in a ditch for 9 full minutes. Meanwhile of great interest to Italian rally enthusiasts is the steady progress of Chris Guichot de Fortis who successfully made it through the opening leg at the wheel of a venerable Fiat Stilo Abarth Trofeo to end the day third in the A7 class; he will start today in 50th place overall.

Today's final leg of the Belgium Rally Ypres is scheduled to get underway for the 53 surviving crews (out of 67 starters) at noon with SS7 with the first loop of the Langemark stage and the day's programme will comprise of nine more stages before the finish line in Ieper is reached at 10:30 PM. The final day's ten stages add up to 166,76 km of timed tests. There will be 146,79 km of transfer distance between the start and finish adding up to a total 313,55 km. Added to yesterday's 118,00 km of timed stages it makes up a total of 284,76 km stage miles against the clock during the 44th Belgium Ypres Rally.