Day 1: Gronholm holds on

Two of Gronholm's main challengers, Petter Solberg and Markko Martin have been forced to retire already. The former had an altercation with a water splash but the latter is lucky to be alive after surviving an enormous accident on SS5.

The Estonian and co-driver Michael Park climbed from the wreckage of their Ford Focus unhurt, which happened over a 180kph jump, but they were both taken for precautionary scans and x-rays at the Hospital de Urgencias. Park was released soon after, but Martin remained in Cordoba for further tests.

Solberg's rally ended after a second disastrous altercation with a water-splash. The Norwegian lost a stack of time and then suffered a terminal fire at the end of SS9 - probably caused by damage incurred in the water splash incident.

"I don't yet know what happened," said Solberg, "I'm obviously disappointed, but we're just going to have to work harder. I've done many rallies in my life and tackled many different watersplashes. However, this has happened three times now, and we're going to have to find the best way of tackling them."

Gronholm won five of the afternoon and evening stages, with Sainz taking one and remaining close on all the others. Sainz is showing his best form of the season so far and as ever he has a slightly bigger reason to win than the others - one more victory will move him into sole occupancy of the top rung of the all-time WRC rally winners ladder - a place he currently shares with Colin McRae.

"I'm generally happy with how things have gone," said Gronholm, "but I haven't been able to relax for one moment. In the afternoon the stages were a lot cleaner and less slippery than they were in the morning. It was also quite rough, with several deep ruts. I've got no complaints about the car though. The team has done an excellent job."

Sainz ended the day just 8.4s behind and is pleased with the way his Citroen Xsara is reacting. "I've felt very confident throughout the course of the event," the Spaniard said. "This has always been a rally that I've liked. I've had no real problems at all today. I'm just pushing hard and we'll see what happens."

Loeb is 33.6s behind the leader but well clear of fourth-placed Ford driver Francois Duval and he's looking at moving into a very satisfactory championship position. The young Frenchman had a nine-point lead coming into Rally Argentina and both his closest title rivals Solberg and Markko Martin - who had an enormous accident this morning - are already out of the event. Loeb's pre-rally advantage over the next man in the points table - Gronholm - was 21 points.

Solberg wasn't the only man in trouble over this afternoon's stages. Gronholm's team-mate Harri Rovanpera lost a load of time to a power-steering problem and finished the day just over 10 minutes off the lead, while Mikko Hirvonen in the second Subaru also lost time to the Impreza bane - the water splash. Mitsubishi's Gilles Panizzi suffered from gearbox and turbo problems.

All that left Kristian Sohlberg in a solid fifth place in the second Mitsubishi Lancer. Hirvonen completed the top six.