Hänninen moves ahead

Juho Hänninen moved into the lead of the 2010 RACMSA Rally of Scotland for Škoda Motorsport on the second running of the Craigvinean stage, displacing the sister car of Guy Wilks, which dropped back with a technical problem. Peugeot UK´s Kris Meeke was just 0.2s adrift of Hänninen´s 10m26.2s but had to work hard to get that close.

"I’m on the limit and beyond everywhere," said Meeke. "The rally’s over for me now."

While Hänninen went 24 seconds faster than the time he set this morning, 11m11.7s was setback for Guy Wilks, who initially put his Fabia’s sluggishness down to a tyre problem. "I think the propshaft’s gone," he said. "The car was moving really heavily at the start and I thought we had a puncture at first. We can only try to get to the service now."

Andreas Mikkelsen’s clean, consistent run to 10m27.9s, third fastest behind Meeke, was good enough to remain ahead of Meeke in the overall standings. "The stage is looking more rutted now," he said. "Maybe we should make the car a little bit higher, we’re a bit low at the moment. But I didn’t hit any animals this time."

Thierry Neuville drifted back by 12.8s, going fourth fastest, while fifth and sixth fell to the duelling Group N Lancer Evo IXs of Euan Thorburn and David Bogie.

Tom Cave is Proton’s sole representative in the top 10 after setting the seventh fastest time. "We had a good run through there, found a good rhythm," he said. "Getting some heat into the tyres made a real difference and I feel a lot better about it now."

Cave’s team-mate Keith Cronin was a very late arrival at the finish. "The steering wheel just came out of my hands," he said. "After looking around under the bonnet to see if there was a problem I didn’t secure the bonnet pins properly and when I got going again it just flew up and smashed the windscreen. There’s probably not much point continuing like this today but we’ll see about tomorrow."

Cronin lost his time card in the confusion and may not be permitted to continue by the stewards.

Group N entrant Dan Barry’s eventful Rally of Scotland continued with further technical problems. After finally curing his Lancer’s malfunctioning turbocharger during the service stop, he suffered a puncture during the stage and his woes were compounded by a sticking throttle.

Overall positions after SS6:

Stages 3 & 6 Craigvinean

After the short blast around Scone Palace the real meat of the competition starts with almost 18 kilometres along the steep sides of Craigvinean Forest. This test starts with a long climb for the cars to the top of the hill at 400metres in height before travelling along the top ridge for some distance and descending through numerous hairpins and arriving at the stop line, which is very close to where the competitors started from around 15 minutes earlier. Due to the nature of the climb and the height of the hill it is common for the top section to be covered in mist and fog. This also happens to be one of the quickest sections of the test so fortune will favour the brave and those committed to their pace notes.

Guy Wilks says: “You couldn’t want for a nicer opening forest stage. It was my first forest stage in a Škoda Fabia S2000, so we won’t be taking it so easy this time. Craigvinean is very fast and flowing for the first two-thirds of the stage, allowing you to really attack it. The last third is extremely tricky and very slippery if it’s wet – the surface here seems to really hold the water, so the car moves around a lot. There are a lot of blind crests, you need total commitment throughout the stage and the pace notes need to be spot on. The spectator area at The Hermitage is a great place to watch the action from.”