Ogier resists recovering Loeb

Loeb's 50-second penalty for being five minutes late onto the Ibarrilla stage after having to stop and repair a gearbox problem put him 24.1s behind new leader Ogier.

It then looked like Loeb would soon be right back on his team-mate's tail as he took 13.7s out of Ogier's advantage on the following Duarte stage. But this proved to be down to a brief loss of power on Ogier's car, and when this problem cleared on Derramadero, it was the younger Frenchman who was faster, while Loeb lost a little ground as he stalled at a hairpin while grappling with a handbrake issue. They head for tonight's two runs through the Guanajuato superspecial 11.3s apart.

The works Fords of Mikko Hirvonen and Jari-Matti Latvala remain lonely in third and fourth places, with Latvala feeling his driving had improved on this loop and giving Ford its first stage win of the weekend on Derramadero.

Henning Solberg's power steering problems returned this afternoon, and became so severe that the Stobart Ford driver pondered retiring after the first stage of the loop. He persevered, but fell from fifth to seventh.

Despite a broken gear lever, his Citroen refusing to start before Derramadero and then a wild moment over a jump, Petter Solberg has moved into fifth place - taking two stage wins along the way - with Mads Ostberg now Stobart Ford's lead runner in sixth.

Leading positions after SS17:

Pos  Driver              Team/Car           Time/Gap
 1.  Sebastien Ogier     Citroen          3h09m36.4s
 2.  Sebastien Loeb      Citroen             + 11.3s
 3.  Mikko Hirvonen      Ford              + 1m28.1s
 4.  Jari-Matti Latvala  Ford              + 2m41.4s
 5.  Petter Solberg      Solberg Citroen   + 6m51.3s
 6.  Mads Ostberg        Stobart Ford      + 8m05.7s
 7.  Henning Solberg     Stobart Ford      + 8m38.6s
 8.  Nasser Al-Attiyah   Barwa Ford       + 10m43.5s
 9.  Martin Prokop       Czech Ford       + 11m20.3s
10.  Juho Hanninen       Red Bull Skoda   + 11m51.5s