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Stage 1 Technology confirmed for rest of World Rally Championship season

The FIA has concluded its first major agreement for the World Rally Championship since the series promoter North One Sport went into administration last month - with Stage 1 Technology confirmed as the timing and tracking supplier for 2012

After being forced to miss the season opener in Monte Carlo for legal reasons, British firm S1T made a single-event agreement for Rally Sweden and has now concluded a deal to provide the systems to track cars from the start to the finish and the timing and results to classify them from every remaining event. The deal was signed by the FIA and S1T on Friday evening after a week of negotiations.

S1T managing director Simon de Banke said: "This is great news. Everybody's had quite a stressful start to the season, so to get this deal across the line in what is an exceptionally short space of time is a fair reflection on how much everybody wants it to work.

"I would like to pay tribute to the speed and ability with which everybody in the FIA has worked to expedite this. And for their foresight and support of the championship in taking the leadership to get our systems back online."

For the first time this season, S1T is providing timing to the millisecond for the qualifying and powerstage elements of the WRC.

Former world champion Petter Solberg had called for a quick agreement after running without complete coverage of the tracking system on the Monte Carlo Rally.

"This is about safety, it's that simple," said Solberg. "When we are going into the stage, we have to know that the teams know where we are going to be. We need the plane, the [S1T] system and we need the FIA to have the safety helicopter everywhere.

"We've been without this system for one rally and we can't go back to that, this needs to stay now, for sure. It's too much of a risk for the WRC to be without these kind of systems."

S1T will return to business as usual on Rally Mexico next month.

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