For the first time in many years, some of Scotland’s finest forest stages were host to an international rally, and what an event it has so far proved to be. 

The RACMSA Rally of Scotland, final round of the 2009 Intercontinental Rally Challenge, was kicked off in spectacular style at Scone Palace the night before, with the First Minister for Scotland, Rt Hon Alex Salmond, MSP, and Sir Jackie Stewart lifting the saltire on Alister McRae’s bright yellow Proton Satria.

As the rally cars popped and banged their way around the opening two stages in the grounds of Scone Palace, noises were being made about the mighty stages to come.

Greeting crews in Craigvinean forest this morning was a glorious burst of sunshine, which although only lasting a couple of hours, was enough to warm the faces of the crews as they headed out to tackle the opening 17km stage, covered on live television by Eurosport.

Peugeot driver Meeke had found himself unable to shake off the challenge of Guy Wilks' Skoda until this afternoon's return to the stage for SS7. And while Wilks was slowed while adjusting his lights in increasingly gloomy and misty conditions, Meeke stepped up his pace and won the stage by a full 15s over Alister McRae and Wilks, impressing many with his maturity and almost Loeb-esque command from the front.

"I don't know what to say - we had a good run," admitted Meeke. "Malcolm Wilson was at the start of that stage and said to me 'you're not going to let Guy Wilks beat you, are you?' I said 'I'd better start driving then', so that one's for Malcolm."

Crowd favourite Alister McRae in the Proton had expected to have his father Jimmy to open the stage in his 1988 Championship winning Sierra Sapphire Cosworth , but sadly the classic Ford was withdrawn after a transmission seal failure. Alister, the 1995 British Champion gave a typically masterful display of driving, impressing with smooth lines as he cleared the mud off the stages for the following drivers.

The leading independent driver is young Ulsterman Jonathan Greer who ended the day just 5.1s ahead of reigning Scottish champion David Bogie (23), both driving Group N Mitsubishis.

Sixth and seventh places were taken by the more experienced Jock Armstrong from Scotland and Eamonn Boland from Ireland.

In the classes, Estonian Martin Kangur leads Class 7 in his Honda Civic Type-R. Youngster Tom Cave leads class 3 in his Ford Fiesta, one place ahead of class 6 leader Kris Hall from Cumbria.

The rally enters Day Two with the crews pensive over the weather and the double-running of the live television stage in particular: the torturous Loch Ard stage - 33kms of twists and turns which last echoed to the sounds of rally cars over twenty years ago.

Leading positions after leg one:

Pos  Driver               Car         Time/Gap
 1.  Kris Meeke           Peugeot     56m35.3s
 2.  Guy Wilks            Skoda       + 21.2s
 3.  Alister McRae        Proton      + 1m18.2s
 4.  Jonathan Greer       Mitsubishi  + 3m49.1s
 5.  David Bogie          Mitsubishi  + 3m54.2s
 6.  Jock Armstrong       Subaru      + 4m44.4s
 7.  Eamonn Boland        Mitsubishi  + 8m15.6s
 8.  Martin Kangur        Honda       + 8m34.5s
 9.  Kaspar Koitla        Honda       + 8m47.9s
10.  Sebastien Rousseaux  Subaru      + 9m13.5s