Sebastien Loeb leads Rally GB as Mikko Hirvonen hits trouble

The title rivals had previously been enjoying an extremely close battle at the front of the Rally GB field, as Loeb pulled out a 3.8-second lead over Hirvonen on opener Gartheiniog, before Hirvonen reduced that gap to 1.3s on Dyfi West then moved into a 0.4s lead on Dyfi East.

But on the following Dyfnant stage, Hirvonen stopped for several minutes then limped to the finished with a damaged car, losing 3m52s to Loeb and falling to 13th place.

That meant Loeb moved into the lead by 17.7s over Hirvonen's Ford team-mate Jari-Matti Latvala, although the points leader said he could not relax at all in the tough conditions.

"I found it very tricky because it's foggy on the top and quite a lot of fog in the stage and a lot of mud," said Loeb.

"It was really, really difficult. I had a few moments in the stage but we are here, so we are quite happy with the situation at the moment. Now we need to see what happens with Mikko."

With Petter Solberg losing time with a puncture on Dyfnant, Mads Ostberg has moved up to third in the Stobart Ford - partly thanks to his own improved pace, but also because of dramas for the Minis.

Dani Sordo went off the road on SS4 when fifth and had to retire, while Kris Meeke fell from sixth to 11th when the alternator belt came off, costing him power and two-and-a-half minutes on SS7.

Leading positions after SS7:

Pos  Driver              Team/Car          Time/Gap
 1.  Sebastien Loeb      Citroen           48m37.7s
 2.  Jari-Matti Latvala  Ford               + 17.7s
 3.  Mads Ostberg        Stobart Ford       + 59.7s
 4.  Petter Solberg      Solberg Citroen  + 1m13.4s
 5.  Henning Solberg     Stobart Ford     + 1m39.0s
 6.  Ott Tanak           Stobart Ford     + 1m52.9s
 7.  Matthew Wilson      Stobart Ford     + 2m07.8s
 8.  Kimi Raikkonen      Ice 1 Citroen    + 2m26.6s
 9.  Dennis Kuipers      FERM Ford        + 2m32.7s
10.  Evgeny Novikov      Abu Dhabi Ford   + 2m49.6s