Loeb dominates Sardinia day one

Having established a comfortable advantage over the field this morning, Loeb was able to drive more conservatively after the lunchtime service and still pull away from his pursuers, while his Citroen teammate Dani Sordo has maintained a strong second place.

"It's been a really good day for Citroen," Loeb said. "Both cars in the first two positions - let's hope it continues like this and we don't have any problems like we did in Jordan."

Sordo lost ground in SS5 after his intercom failed, forcing him to drive very cautiously in fast corners as he was unable to hear co-driver Marc Marti's pace notes. But he was still able to extend the gap back to Citroen's rivals to 18 seconds.

Petter Solberg has had a superb afternoon for Subaru - moving past teammate Chris Atkinson and Ford's Mikko Hirvonen to grab third position, despite brake glitches.

"We had brake problems on the next to last stage and lost the brakes on the stage, then on this stage we had a brake leak on the front," Solberg said after SS6. "But we were very careful and it worked okay.

"This (performance) is down to the team and the engineers and their work on the dampers. That's the only reason why we're quicker, I'm not doing anything different at all. This is very good for Subaru - the whole team needs some proper success."

Hirvonen has remained close to Solberg, finishing the day five seconds behind, with Atkinson now nine seconds adrift of the Ford and being caught by the charging Gigi Galli (Stobart Ford) and works Ford driver Jari-Matti Latvala, who are both recovering from morning punctures.

Galli was the star of the second loop - winning SS4 and setting top three times in the next two stages to close to within three seconds of Atkinson.

"We must be happy, especially as we're in front of our people," said local favourite Galli.

Latvala was either fastest or second-fastest in all of this afternoon's stages as he tried to make up for the error that had caused his earlier damage.

"It's a shame that we had a problem in the morning, but all I can do is look in the mirror to find the reason why we did..." said Latvala. "But it's going okay and now we're trying to get back to the podium."

Fourth-quickest time in the day's final stage brought Henning Solberg (who is back under the Munchi's Ford banner this weekend) up to eighth at the expense of WRT Estonia Citroen driver Urmo Aava, who damaged his car near the end of the final stage and crossed the finish line leaking fluids.

The troubled Suzuki team enjoyed a very encouraging first day as Toni Gardemeister and Per-Gunnar Andersson completed the leg without mechanical problems in 10th and 11th places.

Leading positions after day one:

Pos  Driver        Car      Time
 1.  Loeb          Citroen  1h31:27.6
 2.  Sordo         Citroen   +   35.7
 3.  P Solberg     Subaru    +   53.8
 4.  Hirvonen      Ford      +   58.9
 5.  Atkinson      Subaru    + 1:09.0
 6.  Galli         Ford      + 1:12.3
 7.  Latvala       Ford      + 1:31.1
 8.  H Solberg     Ford      + 1:52.5
 9.  Aava          Citroen   + 2:19.8
10.  Gardemeister  Suzuki    + 2:22.9