GUY Wilks stuck to Skoda's gameplan and made a solid start to his 2010 Intercontinental Rally Challenge campaign yesterday, completing the opening day of the Rallye Monte Carlo in tenth position.

Freezing conditions, rain and low cloud made conditions extremely difficult as Darlingtons Wilks, partnered by co-driver Phil Pugh, successfully completed his first day rallying a Fabia S2000 on asphalt.

Wilks carried two spare tyres throughout the day, allowing him to replace the fronts after Burzet - Lachamp Raphael (SS1 and 3) for Raphael St-Pierreville - Antraigues (SS2 and SS4).

Even with the wrong tyres in the afternoon, he was one minute quicker on SS3 and 21 seconds quicker on SS4 - despite losing 30 seconds on the day's final stage with a spin.

"Conditions have been relatively stable today, but in the morning the set-up of the car was too firm and we struggled a little with confidence," said Wilks.

"It wasn't a problem with the car, just how collectively we'd prepared the car for the conditions.

"For the afternoon we softened the car quite a bit, but were too cautious on tyre choice. We used snow tyres when wets would have been better, but despite this we had a good run through SS3.

"We put slicks on the front for SS4, but with snow tyres on the rear, the back of the car was loose and it was oversteeering quite a lot.

"Unfortunately, after 43kms driving like that we spun on a narrow section and lost about 30 seconds getting going again.

"This is the our first day rallying a Fabia S2000 on asphalt, so it's been our dry asphalt test today - and we've done it in fog, snow and ice.

"We have to be patient regarding the stage times. We're not going to drive like the guys who are doing Rallye Monte Carlo as a one-off event and throwing caution to the wind - we have to think of the IRC and try to score some points.

"If we get our heads together and really sort out set-up and tyre choice then we can definitely go forward."

Leg 2 began today at 8.30am and contains three stages north-west of Valence in the morning and a repeat run in the afternoon. The total competitive distance is 90 miles (145kms), which makes it the longest day of the event.

Fans can follow Wilks progress on Twitter at twitter.com/GuyWilks and Facebook.