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RALLY: Colin McRae has won the the 1999 Rallye De Portugal

26 March 1999

"This is a great victory for the Focus on its first real gravel rally," said 30-year-old McRae, for whom this was his 18th world championship triumph. "We really won the rally during the first leg when we knew we had to make the most of the good conditions. We drove hard through those fast stages as we knew the technical stages later in the rally, where the road conditions were not so good, would be more difficult.

"Its been much harder than many of my other victories but the Focus has performed faultlessly. For the car to be this quick on gravel means it can also be this good on asphalt so I think the rest of the season could be well worth waiting for. Its incredible for a car to be so successful so early in its lifetime and with further development it can only improve," added the 1995 world champion.

Today was a relatively short 60km sprint with 4 stages and very little changed on the leader board except for Solberg who dropped to 11th after problems on the final stage.

Makinen though set the pace today and was out to catch Richard Burns and valuable championship points. He started 25 seconds behind and won 3 of the 4 stages, but Burns was fast enough and kept ahead.

And in Formula 2, Hyundai finally won their first event in the Coupe! ALister McRae wsa first followed by team mate Eriksson in 2nd.

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