Rally: Wilks' chances go crash, bang, wallop

The treacherously fast and demanding forest stages of Perthshire bared their teeth on the opening day of RallyScotland and left the Skoda camp experiencing the highs and the lows of motorsport.

While Finn Juho Hanninen takes an 11.1second lead ahead of Norway's Andreas Mikkelsen into today's final four stages of the penultimate round of the Intercontinental Rally Championship, his team-mate Guy Wilks was left contemplating what might have been.

At the end of a season which saw the 31-year-old from Darlington break his back in a high-speed crash, Wilks was leading in Scotland when he entered the second run through the 10.7-mile test at Craigvinean west of Dunkeld.

Having survived a major scare in the morning when he clattered a rock face and seriously rearranged the front profile of his Fabia S2000, Wilks emerged at the end of Craigvinean shaking his head in disbelief.

"The rear diff's gone," the hugely disappointed Englishman, who won the inaugural RallyScotland last year, said. The damage forced the Skoda to miss the remaining two stages, but will return for today's closing four stages.

Around him, the mayhem continued. Scot Alister McRae's Proton ground to an ignominious halt midway through Errochty, the day's third stage, with alternator problems. Without question though, the biggest heartbreak was felt by Kris Meeke. The 31-year-old from Dungannon, whose early career was guided by Colin McRae, is contesting his final IRC event for Peugeot before switching to the World Rally Championship with Mini.

Meeke, last year's IRC champion, slewed his Peugeot S2000 wide exiting a fast left-hander and emerged from the deep ditch with a right-rear puncture. Then, just a mile into the second run through the nine-miler at Drummond Hill, his Peugeot lost its rear brakes as a result of the damage suffered in the morning and he starts today fourth, 15.8secs behind the Peugeot of Belgian Thierry Neuville, but 1min 46.2s behind Hanninen.

In fact the only man to appear unaffected by the trials of Scotland's toughest forest stages was Hanninen, though even he had an early scare when he almost wrecked his Skoda on just the third corner.

There was frustration too for Hankook Scottish Rally champ David Bogie on yesterday's final stage after a front-right puncture. "It's a big disappointment," the Scot said. "I know we didn't hit any big rocks, so all I can assume is it was just a sharp piece of stone which ripped the tyre. But that's rallying."