Charging Loeb closes on Gronholm

Gronholm dominated the morning and held an 18.5 second advantage after SS5.

But Loeb made substantial gains during the next three stages, winning all of them and setting up a very close leg two battle.

Gronholm suspected that his tyre choice was to blame for his time loss.

"I made no mistakes, but I have a different tyre," he said. "Maybe it's because of that, I don't know.

"It's a lot to lose, it's not what we were expecting."

Just as the lead contest closed up, the previously tight squabble over the rest of the points scoring places was split up by a series of mechanical problems.

Toni Gardemeister's destructive puncture at the start of SS5 and then continued gearbox problems ended his hopes of reclaiming third from Mikko Hirvonen, and left the Ford number two under very little pressure for third.

Dani Sordo and Petter Solberg also hit trouble - with the Kronos Citroen retiring from the leg with engine problems and Solberg having to complete the final two stages of the afternoon stuck in gear.

That allowed the consistent OMV Peugeots to move up to fourth and fifth, but only temporarily, for fifth-placed Henning Solberg stopped and retired in SS8.

Manfred Stohl continues to run fourth, comfortably ahead of Chris Atkinson, while Matthew Wilson is now a superb sixth on his Cyprus Rally debut.

Xavier Pons had recovered well after his morning spin, only to damage his car on a rock during the last stage and lose another minute.

He therefore dropped back to seventh, behind Wilson and only just ahead of the recovering Gardemeister.

Leading positions after leg one:

Pos  Driver         Make           Time
 1.  Gronholm       Ford     1h 45:33.6
 2.  Loeb           Citroen       + 6.4
 3.  Hirvonen       Ford       + 1:25.1
 4.  Stohl          Peugeot    + 1:50.7
 5.  Atkinson       Subaru     + 3:01.0
 6.  Wilson         Ford       + 3:43.4
 7.  Pons           Citroen    + 4:05.2
 8.  Gardemeister   Citroen    + 4:05.3
 9.  Perez Companc  Ford       + 5:22.9
10.  P Solberg      Subaru     + 8:25.3