2010 Amerian 2WD champion Christopher Duplessis and his co-driver Karl Atkinson have a comfortable lead in the 2WD category at the Sno*Drift Rally based in Atlanta, Michigan.

Duplessis from Maine and Atkinson from the UK haven't been challenged all day in their specially built 2011 Ford Fiesta R2, a package of parts designed for high performance rallying.

They've skillfully managed the treacherous stage roads to sit in tenth overall after the first 12 special stages of the event.

There'll be another 12 stages starting Saturday morning.

Duplessis acknowledged the slippery conditions and admitted to spinning early in the event but he said mostly it was fun on Friday.

Second in the 2WD caegory is 2009 national 2WD champion Dillon Van Way from Louisiana and his co-driver Jake Blattner from Oregon in a turbocharged 2011 Ford Fiesta. Van Way and Blattner are more than four minutes back from Duplessis and Atkinson. They sit 13th overall.

But that's where the competition in the 2WD category is intense.

Thirteenth through 16th overall are 2WD competitors and less than 30 seconds covers all four cars.

Eric Burmeister and co-driver Dave Shindle in a 2003 Mazda Protege are 14th. Fifteenth is 2009 North American rally champion Andrew Comrie-Picard and co-driver Jeremy Wimpey in a 2011 Scion xD. And sixteenth is commercial airline pilot Chris Greenhouse and co-driver Phil Marsh in a 1995 Plymouth Neon.

With the difficult freezing conditions and the heated competition in the 2WD class, literally anything is possible before the end of the Sno*Drift Rally Saturday night.

But that’s normal for the class. The cars are very close in performance and the drivers are equally as close in skill. This is the rally inside the Sno*Drift that will produce the best competition all weekend.