Francois Duval quickest at New Zealand shakedown

This weekend the Belgian is driving a Ford Focus RS WRC for the Stobart VK M-Sport team in place of Gigi Galli, who broke his leg in an accident on Rallye Deutschland.

Duval is best known as asphalt rally specialist, although his only WRC win to date came on the gravel of Rally Australia in 2005.

Duval's most recent gravel rally in the WRC was in 2006, when he drove a Skoda Fabia on the Acropolis Rally of Greece. On that occasion he retired when his car overheated. His most recent experience of driving a WRC spec Ford Focus on gravel was in 2004 when he finished third on Rally Australia.

At today’s prelude to the proper competition, Duval completed the 3.08km shakedown stage in 2min 26.0sec, four-tenths faster than Jari-Matti Latvala of the BP Ford Abu Dhabi team who was his closest rival. Weather conditions throughout the morning were fine and sunny and the road was largely dry.

"It’s been a long time since I’ve driven a Ford Focus on a gravel rally but the car feels really nice," said Duval. "But this weekend is going to be difficult for me. The stages are completely new and so are the car and the tyres. In fact everything is new.

Of course it feels good to be fastest today - it’s not bad - but the road isn’t very representative of tomorrow’s stages, so we have to wait and see how we get on."

Full information on www.wrc.com