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Meeke crash leaves Loix dominant

Freddy Loix now holds an advantage of half a minute in the Ypres Rally after Kris Meeke crashed out of second place this morning

Meeke and Loix's head to head battle for the lead looked like it might run all day when they set times just 0.1 seconds apart on today's opening stage.

But as Meeke tried to close down the 5.7s gap between them in the overall standings, he rolled on SS5 and heavily damaged his Peugeot 207. Both Meeke and co-driver Paul Nagle were unhurt, and Loix was disappointed to hear of their exit.

"Of course I now have to drive in a different way," said the Belgian. "This wasn't how I wanted the fight with Kris to stop because it was quite exciting. It's important to me to have fun in the car and yesterday and this morning were fantastic. Now I have to change my strategy."

The crash leaves Loix 30.9s ahead of his Skoda team-mate Jan Kopecky, who could make big championship gains this weekend with Juho Hanninen and Meeke both having accidents.

Meeke's exit also elevated his young Belgian team-mate Thierry Neuville to an excellent third place. Pieter Tsjoen was another retirement this morning, putting Bernd Casier into fourth and Andreas Mikkelsen up to fifth.

Mikkelsen had a quick excursion through a field on SS5, but held on to his place as the chasing Patrick Snijers was delayed slightly by a slow puncture.

Pos  Driver             Car           Time/Gap
 1.  Freddy Loix        Skoda       1h13m31.5s
 2.  Jan Kopecky        Skoda          + 30.9s
 3.  Thierry Neuville   Peugeot      + 1m03.9s
 4.  Bernd Casier       Skoda        + 2m15.1s
 5.  Andreas Mikkelsen  Ford         + 2m42.0s
 6.  Patrick Snijers    Peugeot      + 3m08.2s
 7.  Michal Solowow     Ford         + 3m43.3s
 8.  Bruno Magalhaes    Peugeot      + 4m06.3s
 9.  Luca Betti         Peugeot      + 4m12.4s
10.  Alexandre Romain   Mitsubishi   + 4m41.1s

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