Hirvonen ahead after Loeb penalised

Loeb had been fastest through the first two stages of the afternoon, taking second place from Jari-Matti Latvala in Pirongia West and then reducing Hirvonen's lead to just 0.7 seconds.

But just as the world champion seemed set to move ahead of Hirvonen, his Citroen failed to start before Waitomo part 2. By the time the car was coaxed into life, Loeb was three minutes late and duly received a 30 second time penalty, so although he was fastest in the stage, he is now 27.8 seconds behind Hirvonen rather than leading by 2.2 seconds.

Although it could be more advantageous for Loeb to be second rather than first in the running order tomorrow, the Frenchman said there was nothing tactical about his delay.

"I just hit the starter button and it didn't work," said Loeb. "We tried everything. In the end we rolled the car back, pushed it and finally got it going. It had nothing to do with tactics."

Hirvonen didn't doubt that Loeb's problems had been genuine.

"I don't know what was wrong, but Seb really did seem to have a problem," he said. "So tomorrow it looks like I'll be first car on the road. Okay, it won't be easy but we've found a good rhythm today, so we'll see what we can do."

Ford did choose to take a tactical approach with their second car, as Latvala deliberately slowed in SS4.2. He didn't quite manage to fall behind both Citroens - completing the stage 0.4 seconds in front of Dani Sordo - but felt the tactics had still been worthwhile given the likely road conditions in the morning.

"I think third place is better than second, but we'll see how we get on tomorrow," said Latvala.

He did drop to fourth overall when Sordo set a faster time through the leg-ending Mystery Creek superspecial, but with the running order set on the results after the day's final fully-fledged stage, this change of position has no bearing on tomorrow's arrangements.

Chris Atkinson crashed out of fifth place in the first of this afternoon's stages, the Australian rolling his Subaru and then coming to a halt later in the stage when the engine failed due to the damage it had sustained in the accident.

His retirement moves Stobart Ford's Francois Duval up to fifth. The Belgian is now a minute behind the top four, but a comfortable 40 seconds clear of sixth placed Urmo Aava.

Petter Solberg was able to set more competitive times in the afternoon and is now up to seventh for Subaru, with the two Suzukis promoted to eighth and ninth after Matthew Wilson's promising early run was halted by gearbox problems on his Stobart Ford.

Federico Villagra (Munchi's Ford) completes the current top ten, having passed Conrad Rautenbach in Mystery Creek. Further back, Villagra's teammate Henning Solberg is now back up to speed following his morning power steering failure, but is 10 minutes off the pace in 28th overall.

Leading positions after day one:

Pos  Driver        Make     Time
 1.  Hirvonen      Ford     1h34:44.3
 2.  Loeb          Citroen   +   27.8
 3.  Sordo         Citroen   +   30.0
 4.  Latvala       Ford      +   30.1
 5.  Duval         Ford      + 1:27.9
 6.  Aava          Citroen   + 2:01.3
 7.  P Solberg     Subaru    + 2:25.8
 8.  Andersson     Suzuki    + 2:50.5
 9.  Gardemeister  Suzuki    + 3:48.0
10.  Villagra      Ford      + 4:47.5