Loeb takes first Rally Finland win

The result also marked only the second occasion in 17 years that a non-Finnish driver had won this legendary event, and Citroen's first win in Finland since 1962.

Even Loeb had expected to have to settle for a podium finish this weekend, as the Ford Focus was expected to be the quicker car at this event - especially given Ford's all-Finnish driver line-up.

But Loeb led from the start on Thursday night, and when Jari-Matti Latvala crashed his Ford out of third place early on Friday morning, it was down to Mikko Hirvonen to try to take the fight to the reigning champion.

However despite Hirvonen's best efforts, Loeb managed to consistently edge away at the front. The Frenchman led by 18 seconds going into today's final three stages, and when Hirvonen could do no better than equal Loeb's time in SS22, it was clear that the fight was over.

Loeb gave Hirvonen a glimmer of hope when he dropped five seconds in SS23 after misjudging his pace, but the Citroen driver was able to hang on and win by nine seconds.

Hirvonen admitted that he was impressed by Loeb's performance and the pace the battling duo had shown as they left the rest of the field over three minutes behind.

"This is one of the rallies where I thought I could take points from Sebastien," he said. "In the end it was a fantastic fight and I'm pleased with our speed, but he was just a few seconds faster."

Chris Atkinson was thrilled to come through to Subaru - a result that had looked extremely unlikely when the team's cars both languished near the foot of the top ten on Friday.

The Australian benefited from the likes of Urmo Aava (Estonian WRT Citroen) and Gigi Galli (Stobart Ford) crashing out when challenging for podium finishes, but the majority of his progress was down to the improved speed that he showed on Saturday, when he set a series of very rapid stage times.

By the end of the day Atkinson had caught and passed Citroen's Dani Sordo for third, and he continued to pull away from the Spaniard this morning, duly clinching his fifth podium of 2008 and his first in the new Subaru.

Sordo held on for fourth ahead of Stobart Ford's Henning Solberg, who fended off his elder brother Petter for fifth as the Subaru driver also showed better pace on the final day.

Local privateer Matti Rantanen finished an excellent seventh in his Ford, with Toni Gardemeister claiming the final point for Suzuki despite mid-rally gearbox problems.

Pos  Driver        Car      Time
 1.  Loeb          Citroen  2h54:05.5
 2.  Hirvonen      Ford     +     9.0
 3.  Atkinson      Subaru   +  3:17.0
 4.  Sordo         Citroen  +  3:30.9
 5.  H Solberg     Ford     +  3:57.7
 6.  P Solberg     Subaru   +  4:04.1
 7.  Rantanen      Ford     +  6:11.1
 8.  Gardemeister  Suzuki   +  8:18.7
 9.  Wilson        Ford     +  8:37.3
10.  Rautenbach    Citroen  + 10:30.9