Maurin starts day two in Corsica out front

With the top 10 overall positions reversed for day two of Tour de Corse-E.Leclerc, Julien Maurin will have the honour of running at the head of the field on round three of the Intercontinental Rally Challenge.

Driving the latest specification M-Sport Ford Fiesta S2000, Maurin will be followed through Friday’s six stages by Toni Gardemeister in a TGS Worldwide Škoda Fabia S2000.

Bruno Magalhães will be next up in his Peugeot Sport Portugal 207 with Corsican hero Pierre Campana fourth in his similar machine.

Thierry Neuville, who leads the event by 8.9s in his Team Peugeot Belgium-Luxembourg 207 goes 10th, one place behind Škoda Motorsport driver Jan Kopecký.

Friday’s itinerary covers a competitive distance of 127.34 kilometres. The opening stage, Erbajolo-Pont d’Altiani gets underway at 09:10hrs local time. Measuring 25.15 kilometres in length the stage will be shown live on Eurosport, Eurosport France and France 3 Corsica-Via Stella.

Stages five and eight will also be shown live at 12:00hrs and 17:30hrs CET. Full details are available in the TV times section of www.rally-irc.com.

The top 10 starting positions for day two are as follows:

1 Julien Maurin/Olivier Ural (M-Sport Ford Fiesta S2000)
2 Toni Gardemeister/Tapio Suominen (Škoda Fabia S2000)
3 Bruno Magalhães/Paulo Grave (Peugeot 207 S2000)
4 Pierre Campana/Sabrina de Castelli (Peugeot 207 S2000)
5 Guy Wilks/Phil Pugh (Peugeot 207 S2000)
6 Freddy Loix/Frédéric Miclotte (Škoda Fabia S2000)
7 Andreas Mikkelsen/Ola Fløene (Skoda Fabia S2000)
8 Bryan Bouffier/Xavier Panseri (Peugeot 207 S2000)
9 Jan Kopecký/Petr Starý (Škoda Fabia S2000)
10 Thierry Neuville/Nicolas Gilsoul (Peugeot 207 S2000)