Abarth's disastrous Intercontinental Rally Challenge season got even worse in Ypres last night as Giandomenico Basso dropped down the leaderboard on the final leg to finish eighth and collect just a solitary championship point. The Italian has started Saturday's final leg of the prestigious 45th Belgium Ypres Rally in fourth place, a position he had wrested off Skoda's Juha Hanninen on the final stage of the first leg, but multiple punctures blighted his hopes of a respectable finish at the wheel of the factory-run Grande Punto Abarth S2000.

Basso had started the final day in Belgium with just 1 second over Hanninen, having wrested fourth place away on the very last stage of the first leg; however the Skoda pilot reduced the gap to 0.8 seconds after the opening stage of the day, SS7. The next stage and Hanninen took 3.3 seconds off Basso to grab away fourth place. The Italian then seemed well on his way to a solid fifth place, and although harried by sixth-placed Peter Tsjoen (Peugeot 207 S2000), the two drivers were quite evenly matched, rarely more than a second or two away from each other on stage times and even posting dead heat times on SS15, the penultimate stage of the rally, which left Basso going into the final 31.26 km longest stage with a decent 12 second advantage. However agonisingly that last test saw Basso get a puncture and lose 2 minutes and 20 seconds to the stage winner to plunge him down to eighth place.

With Basso's usual team mate Finnish youngster Anton Alén dropped for this event in came local Ypres specialist Bernd Casier. However the Belgian driver had a dreadful opening leg and started Saturday's final day right down in eighteenth place after punctures, mechanical issues and a fire extinguisher that went gone off in the cockpit all contributed to valuable lost time. Posting some decent times at the bottom end of the top-ten positions during the final leg Casier worked his way up to fourteenth place by the time the finish line came into sight.

It means that with five out of the eleven IRC rounds now completed, Abarth has collected just 15 points in the manufacturers' standings, compared to championship leaders Peugeot which is now on 68. Sandwiched etween the French and Italian brands comes Mitsubishi (35) and Skoda (25). In the drivers' series Basso has collected 11 points while ahead of him are series leader Meeke (30), Loix (24), Kopecký (21) and Vouilloz (14).

At the front of the rally the in going leader in the International Rally Challenge, Kris Meeke, confirmed his ambitions in the title race by taking first spot in the Belgian leg of the championship after a fierce battle with Freddy Loix, five times winner of the event in the Westhoek. "When I came to Ypres, I never really thought I would stand a chance here", explained the Ulsterman after the event. "When I saw I could keep up with Freddy, I decided to go for it and it worked. This is actually my first real great victory in a rally with a legendary name. I have to thank Kronos for having supplied a perfect car and win on my first participation to this event."

The main loser of the final day, Freddy Loix, was the first driver to congratulate Meeke, first over the air with Eurosport, later in person few metres after the finish of the marathon stage of Heuvelland. “We were in for a perfect run through, but then we suffered this fatal puncture. No doubt, it was my fault and this is where I lost the race,” explained the Belgian. “Still, this was one of the most fun rallies I competed in as it is much nicer to fight for every second than to finish miles ahead of the second in the ranking.”

The other surprise of the rally was Jan Kopecký of Czech who finished a mere 20 seconds from Meeke. Despite only setting one fastest time over the entire rally, on Saturday morning in Dikkebus, the Czech really performed constantly at a very high level and hence finished so close behind the winner. Behind the three leaders was a three way fight for fourth place between Tsjoen, Basso and Hanninen. The Finn seemed to have the upper hand but when he suddenly found Loix chasing him and found himself in a race for a podium spot, he upped the pace. This unfortunately ended up in suffering a puncture in the last stage. This did shake up the ranking as Pieter Tsjoen now found himself in fourth with Hanninen nearly one minute behind him.

Basso's misfortune saw him being overtaken by Gilles Schammel and Jasper Van den Heuvel who were fighting it out for, what they thought seventh place. Although Van den Heuvel lost out finally by one tenth of a second, he still won the ‘classic’ group N. Caren Burton showed off his talent by finishing 15th overall and first in the Citroën Sport Trophy Belux. Matthias Boon took first spot in the Ford Fiesta Trophy. In summary, we could say that with Meeke, Van den Heuvel, and Boon each winning their category with some margin, this 45th Belgium Ypres Rally made quite some victims. Only 34 cars out of 70 entries reached the finish. The biggest losers were Francois Duval, who didn’t make it past the first corner and 2008 IRC champion Nicolas Vouilloz who really misjudged an overtaking opportunity and parked his car in a ditch when trying to pass Solowow on the 8th stage.