Sarrazin leads on rallying return

Stephane Sarrazin leads Bryan Bouffier by just 1.7 seconds after a gripping first day of the European Rally Championship finale in Corsica.

Sarrazin and Bouffier swapped positions at the top of the field throughout the six stages on what turned out to be a day of attrition for the ERC field.

Sarrazin and Bouffier then shared the win on SS2 amid slightly bizarre scenes as Sarrazin lost a few seconds avoiding a cow that had strayed onto the course three miles from the finish.

Bouffier snatched the overall lead after taking victory on stage three as Sarrazin dropped 3.2s, struggling to push flat-out in the wet and humid conditions that remained throughout the day.

The lead changed hands again as Sarrazin took the honours on SS4, where Bouffier lost 17s to his rival after suffering a puncture just over three miles from the end of the stage.

That prompted a comeback charge from Bouffier, who reduced that gap to under 2s over the two stages that closed leg one.

Craig Breen and Kajetan Kajetanowicz both failed in their quest to snatch second place in the championship from Sepp Wiegand, absent following his crash and fire in pre-rally testing.

Breen had been third overall after stage one but transmission difficulties cost him more than a minute on SS3 and then forced him to retire.

Kajetanowicz was out even earlier: retiring after SS1 when his Ford Fiesta R5 suffered a driveshaft failure.

Kevin Abbring ended up in third place overall in the remaining works Peugeot while Romain Dumas, making a special appearance in the Porsche 997 GT3 R-GT car, finished the day sixth.