Motorsport: McRae looking for hat-trick

Colin McRae has his sights on a World Rally Championship hat-trick in Finland tonight.

The Scot - with wins in Greece and Kenya in the previous two events - has closed the gap on championship leader Marcus Gronholm to just seven points.

But McRae admits his Finnish rival holds the upper hand on the ultra-fast gravel that traditionally favours the home drivers.

As McRae prepared his Ford Focus for the rally, which begins with a 2km special stage at Killeri, he said: 'I'd love to score a 2002 hat-trick in Finland and I'll certainly be going there with winning in mind. But this is still one of the most difficult rallies for a foreign driver to win.

'With narrower stages being used more often, it's getting a bit easier to challenge the Nordic drivers with their immense local knowledge, but it's still a particularly tough task to triumph on this high-speed event.'

Gronholm's task has been made slightly easier be the fact that title rival and Peugeot team-mate Gilles Panizzi is an absentee. The Frenchman had surgery last week after fracturing his right shoulder in a fall at his Monaco home.