After technical issues plagued the stage 6 special, BJ Baldwin was forced to start this morning from 63rd place in today’s stage. With many cars in front of him and tracks crossed and recrossed by vehicles ahead of him making them difficult to navigate on and impossible to follow, BJ knew he had it all to do today. He set about this with his customary single mindedness and by the first waypoint, his 63rd position had been converted to 24th, just 2 minutes 24 seconds behind the stage leader.

At waypoint 2 after some issues, he was back in thirtieth place but he fought back to reach 19th place by waypoint 3, 6 minutes 44 seconds behind new stage leader Carlos Sainz who would go on to win the special today.

15th at waypoint 4 and 16th at waypoint 5 he was closing in on Robby Gordon, then 13th, in time if not on the road. At waypoint 6 he hit 11th place, now one place ahead of Gordon but at waypoint 7 it was situation reversed as Gordon hit 11th place while BJ had slipped to 13th. However, disaster was to befall Gordon whose HST Gordini stopped before waypoint 8 for more than a hour with an unknown problem, pushing him down to 62nd place while BJ took 11th.

At waypoint 9, BJ had slipped to 12th, 17 minutes 24 seconds behind the lead. The next waypoint to be displayed was just before the finish and somehing obviously happened here as BJ found himself in 27th place and ulimately, hit the finish line 28th, 50 minutes, 52 seconds behing winner, Sainz.

After his unscheduled stop, Robby was overtaken on the road by BJ as well as in the timings and is not home yet. He was running 61st at waypoint 9 and is expected back very soon.