Mitsubishi clearly still have a lot of work to do after Alister McRae finished 10th, the car performed at best on wet roads. Harsh reality after his strong 5th in Sweden.

Delecour did what he could with the Lancer WRC and finished ninth, having struggled with the Lancer's suspension settings over the bumpy tarmac.

Tommi Makinen & Risto Mannisenmaki debut the Lancer WRC car which was hampered by transmission trouble and then Tommi got caught out by standing water and put it in the scenery for good leaving his team mate Loix to finish 12th.

Tommi Makinen celebrated his 100th world rally start by chalking up his 22nd outright win on this a very wet and muddy rally of Portugal.He lead the rally from the start only to have it taken from him on the penultimate stage by Carlos Sainz, Makinen fought back on the final to win by 8.6 seconds.

Fast Freddy Loix finished 12th in the Carisma WRC after his team mate Makinen slipped up in standing water taking to the scenery and out of the rally.

Tommi Makinen & Risto Mannisenmaki stormed to their second Safari win leading from the second competative section till the end some 1071.02 Km this was Tommi's 23rd world rally win equalling Colin McRae, Carlos Sainz and Juha Kankkunen as the most successful rally drivers of all time.

Tommi Makinen & Risto Mannisenmaki started out in 3rd after day one and then moved upto 2nd for the final two days never able to catch the hard charging Gronholm in the 206 WRC .
Tommi added a further 6 points to his win from Monte Carlo to lead the championship.

Tommi Makinen & Risto Maninisenmaki , 3 punctures on the second section of this car breaker of a rally and finaly retirement due to battery failure , which went onto hit his team mate Loix on the 2nd Leg.

Freddy Loix & Sven Smeets suffered the same engine failure to Makinen , faulty batteries was the cause of retirement for both.