Scottish driver Colin McRae has finally ignited his Championship hopes for the 2001 season by winning the 5th round in Argentina. The 1996 world champion essentially led from start to finish in an event which in previous years he has shone at but never actually managed to win. His teammate Spaniard Carlos Sainz surprised everyone by finishing third despite suffering badly from a back injury sustained whilst playing football.
Subaru driver Richard Burns ended the Rally in second place having relentlessly pressurised his British rival throughout. Tommi Makinen was fourth having spent two days locked in battle with his young Finnish counterpart Petter Solberg who was 5th. The other Mitsubishi driver Freddy Loix celebrated the completion of his 50th World Rally event by rounding off the top six.
The event however was marred by an accident involving a fire engine and members of the Skoda team. The emergency vehicle was rushing to a fire which had broken out amongst some spectator's cars. It approached a bend much too quickly and overturned just at the place where the two Skoda Rally cars were waiting to enter the service area. Bruno Thiry and Stephane Prevot were actually sat in the car at the time but miraculously emerged unscathed. Unfortuneately the Skoda Chief Engineer Dr.Jens Pohlmann was not so lucky and had to be rushed to hospital with serious injuries. Understandably the team withdrew from the event at this stage.
The current World Champions Peugeot had a dismal time of it. Harri Rovanpera went out early on with a broken driveshaft and was joined soon after by Didier Auriol who had had a turbo failure. Finland's Marcus Gronholm was showing increasing signs of exasperation with the unreliability of this year's car as he struggled with first engine, then power steering problems before finally crashing out on the last day ( Having just set the fastest time on the previous stage.)
| Tommi Makinen | 27 |
| Carlos Sainz | 22 |
| Harri Rovanpera | 10 |
| = Didier Auriol | 10 |
| =Colin McRae | 10 |
| Richard Burns | 9 |
| =Francois Delecour | 9 |
| Mitsubishi | 44 |
| Ford | 36 |
| Peugeot | 20 |
| Subaru | 16 |
| Hyundai | 8 |
| Skoda | 6 |
Rally Results posted by
David Little
The HTML code for this page has been validated by the World Wide Web Consortium.