After Thursday’s qualifying stage it became clear that for WRC Team MINI Portugal the first day of the Rally Greece would entail cleaning the stages for the entire field. As the surface of the stages closely resembles a rusty washing board, the fastest drivers from qualifying elected to start towards the back, thus leaving the early starters to clear the road surface of stones and debris. This would facilitate an easier ride over the Greek donkey tracks.

Despite their thankless task, Paulo Nobre in the lead MINI John Cooper Works WRC and Araujo in the second car, mastered Friday’s first pass to crucially emerge without the expected tyre damage. Making his debut in a MINI WRC and having a clean run without any notable issues was Abdulaziz Al-Kuwari of the Seashore Qatar Rally Team. Currently Armindo, in 12^th  place overall, leads the trio of MINI drivers contesting the Rally Greece.

"To look after the tyres was practically impossible," said Armindo afterwards. "But the MINI improved stage by stage, so I am happy." Since the first stage on Thursday evening Armindo had made up overall positions, and thus goes into day 2 in Greece in twelfth place. The field faces eight further stages totalling 149,56 timed kilometres, including two runs through the Ziria test – at 21,36 kilometres the longest stage of the day, and run as Stages 13 and 17.The leg starts with Special Stage 10 at 08 38 local time (CET-1)

Find live updates from Greece here: Twitter.com/MINImotorsport

Top 5 (Friday):

1. Loeb

2. Latvala

3. Petter Solberg

4. Hirvonen

5. Novikov