Subaru's Chris Atkinson dropped right out of contention on SS2 of the Rallye Deutschland on Friday, when he spun off the road near the end of the 23.04 kilometre test.

Atkinson, who had set the fourth best time in SS1, got caught out by the tricky conditions around the 19 kilometre mark - and he lost more than 7 minutes as a result.

Although his Impreza WRC2007 was undamaged in the incident, it remained beached for sometime until a sufficient number of spectators arrived to help push the car back onto the road.

"I cut a corner a little too deeply and the car bounced out, spun around and we went off backwards into a field," explained the Aussie to the official Subaru World Rally Team website.

Atkinson however wasn't the only driver to have problems in Grafschaft Veldenz 1 - indeed Ford privateer, Andreas Mikkelsen retired 11 kilometres in when he went off the road and badly damaged the right rear suspension on his Ramsport-run Focus RS WRC 05.

Mikkelsen is the first big retirement from the event, the tenth round in the 2007 FIA World Rally Championship.

More to follow later...