Different tactics for the teams. Ford Going for 16 & 17th on road, hoping to avoid road sweeping, But Citroën are going for 1st & 2nd on Road. So who has chosen the best position? It all depends on the conditions and the weather. Also hanging dust could be an issue as a result. Especially on Thursday evenings Night Stages.

Hirvonen said on WRC.com: “Maybe there’s dust, maybe not. Even if there’s dust or rain it’s better to be first car on the road. The road cleaning might be a problem but there are only three short stages and if we lose something with that it shouldn’t be too much and we should be able to fight back from that. I’m optimistic for the rally but it’s going to be interesting where we are compared to the Fords. We spoke about it together as a team and as you can see Sebastien took the second place so that was our goal.”

Fords Jari Matti Latvala said, “We are counting more on the cleaning effect that it will be cleaner with more grip. The organisers have promised there is no dust on the [night] stages so we are also counting on that and the information in our team that we are confident the cleaning effect is bigger than the dust problem.”

The top 17 starting positions for day one:

1 Mikko Hirvonen (Citroen)

2 Sebastien Loeb (Citroen)

3 Ott Tanak (M-Sport)

4 Dani Sordo (Prodrive)

5 Jari Ketomaa (Autotek)

6 Thierry Neuville (Citroen Junior)

7 Armindo Aruajo (MINI Portugal)

8 Martin Prokop (Czech)

9 Nasser Al-Attiyah (Qatar WRT)

10 Daniel Oliveira (Brazil WRT)

11 Peter van Merksteijn Jr (Van Merksteijn)

12 Dennis Kuipers (M-Sport)

13 Patrik Sandell (Prodrive)

14 Mads Ostberg (Adapta)

15 Evgeny Novikov (M-Sport)

16 Petter Solberg (Ford)

17 Jari-Matti Latvala (Ford)