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Freistadt, 6 January, 2012 – In typical winter conditions, the opening event of the 2012 season, the Jänner Rally in Austria, offered a thrilling spectacle today, with ŠKODA Motorsport's factory drivers Juho Hänninen and Jan Kopecký starring in the main roles. Juho and Jan struggled hard with difficult conditions in the opening section and suffered considerable losses on the snow-covered roads, but then they both showed a breath-taking finish to move up the standings – Juho Hänninen & Mikko Markkula are in the lead and Jan Kopecký & Pavel Dresler are third before Saturday's final leg.

The rally was thrilling right from the beginning – after a heavy snowfall combined with strong winds at night, the first section was indeed a challenge, especially for the first drivers that "cleaned" the track for the others. As the first driver to hit the road, Juho Hänninen was worst-off – he was 16th after Stage 1 and was more than one minute behind the leader after the first three stages. Jan Kopecký, the third driver to appear on the track today, was in a similar situation, and was losing 37 seconds in fifth place after the first three stages. However, the conditions were gradually getting fairer with the increasing amount of traffic and therefore a decreasing amount of snow on the road, and both ŠKODA Motorsport drivers put in a brilliant performance to move up the standings – in particular, Hänninen & Markkula showed a fantastic chase ride to gradually close the gap behind the first two drivers in the standings, Austria's Baumschlager and Harrach, and take the lead at the end of Day 1. Kopecký & Dresler are third, 21 seconds behind second-placed Baumschlager (also in a Fabia Super 2000).

Commenting on Day 1, Juho Hänninen says: "We did not make the best of starts this morning – although we looked forward to snow, we actually ploughed the road for the others. However, the road conditions got gradually fairer and we put in a good performance".

Jan Kopecký adds: "The start was not really good, but the second section was better because the road was cleaner. We could have been even higher than we are if I hadn't made a small mistake. We have a difficult leg ahead of us tomorrow, because the conditions here are really tricky."

The Jänner Rally ends on Saturday – the programme includes eight stages (109 kilometres).

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