After the opening day of competition in Rally New Zealand, Jari Ketomaa holds the overnight lead in the Super 2000 World Rally Championship class, despite a few scares aboard his Ford Fiesta.

The Finn has topped the S2000 class throughout day one and returned to service in Auckland 22,5 seconds in front of Xevi Pons. Ketomaa is in fine 9th place in overall competition.

But Ketomaa's day hasn't gone entirely to plan.

His car's crank sensor began to fail during the third stage and stopped working altogether ahead of Friday afternoon's five stages which restricted engine performance.

At the completion of stage four, his Fiesta's engine refused to fire up and Ketomaa and co-driver Mika Stenberg spent 15 minutes on the phone to their Shanghai FCACA World Rally Team obtaining instructions to get the engine restarted.

Ketomaa has remained upbeat, however, and said:

- The gap is okay, we have had some problems, including with dust, but we are quite happy. We are leading but we have some work to do to the car.

- The roads are really great here. Hopefully we can drive without problems and enjoy the event.

- Jarno Saari-