Loeb cruises to home rally win

The Citroen driver, whose victory extends his lead at the head of the points standing, finished the event with a 29-second margin over closest title rival Marcus Gronholm. It was his second win of the Corsica event.

Loeb may not have been as dominant as 12 months ago, when his maiden Corsica victory came after he won each and every stage, but he was once again pretty much unchallenged.

The Frenchman had gone into the final day with a near 40-second advantage over Gronholm, and he duly made sure to match the pace of his Ford rival, who is the only other driver to have won a rally this year.

"It has been a really good start to the season," said Loeb, whose season tally is now three wins and two second places.

"We are leading the championship with 11 points now. That is good, because it is more than 10, which is more than one victory. Marcus was fast and I am also happy for Dani Sordo who took third.

"It is a pleasure to win here. I won here last year for the first time and was really happy, and I am happy again. To win in front of all my fans is a great moment."

Gronholm knew there was little point in pushing too hard on the final day, because the gap to Loeb was too big, but that did not stop him setting the fastest stage times on SS11 and SS12.

"I am a little bit disappointed, but Seb was very good this weekend," said the Finn. "We were not as good as him in Catalunya and had the speed here in the car, but we were struggling a little bit with the feeling. It was not perfect but very good."

Dani Sordo had to respond to a final charge from Ford's Mikko Hirvonen to secure himself third spot. The Spaniard found his overnight advantage cut to just half a second after SS9, and he duly put in stage best time on SS10 to claim his second consecutive podium finish.

"This rally for me was okay, and to have two podiums on tarmac rallies is incredible," he said.

Although Sordo was delighted to have got on the podium again, he must have been wondering what might have been if he had not lost time on the first stage with car problems.

He had to stop on the stage with turbo boost and differential difficulties and hoped that a rebooting of the car's electronics would resolve the issue, but to no avails. He dropped to 13th at one point but recovered brilliantly with a host of stage best times.

Although Hirvonen was instructed to ensure he brought his car home on the final day, it did not stop him trying to close down on Sordo. In the end he just missed out on the spot, but was still pretty happy with the way his event had gone - especially having made it home despite running off the road on the final stage.

"I just missed out on the podium, but I needed to back off," said the Ford driver, who had only scored two points so far this season. "We went off on this stage and damaged both back wheels, so we were lucky this time."

Fifth place went to Alex Bengue, who finished a comfortable 22.5 seconds clear of Xavier Pons.

"I am very happy, because it has been a difficult event," said the Frenchman, who had run as high as third on the opening day.

"The rally was very long with difficult stages, and I am happy to be here today. We have improved everything each stage, both my driving and the set-up of the car."

Manfred Stohl took seventh while the final point went to Stephane Sarrazin, who at least gave Subaru a small reason to smile after a pretty disappointing weekend.

"It was a really difficult weekend," said the Frenchman. "We try to push, push, push but the time was not here. One point is better than zero but we need to improve for the next rally."

Subaru teammate Petter Solberg, who came home a lowly 11th, admitted he was 'hungry' to get back to winning ways and eager for the next gravel event in Argentina.

Final top 20 results:

Pos  Driver      Make       Time
 1.  Loeb        Citroen    3h 43:05.4
 2.  Gronholm    Ford       +     29.0
 3.  Sordo       Citroen    +   1:48.7
 4.  Hirvonen    Ford       +   1:59.2
 5.  Bengue      Peugeot    +   2:47.7
 6.  Pons        Citroen    +   3:10.2
 7.  Stohl       Peugeot    +   5:01.3
 8.  Sarrazin    Subaru     +   5:21.9
 9.  Galli       Peugeot    +   5:42.5
10.  Kopecky     Skoda      +   6:11.4
11.  Solberg     Subaru     +   6:40.5
12.  Rovanpera   Skoda      +  13:12.3
13.  Atkinson    Subaru     +  14:57.1
14.  Tirabassi   Citroen    +  26:15.8
15.  Aava        Suzuki     +  26:24.0
16.  Aigner      Skoda      +  26:41.9
17.  Wilson      Ford       +  27:04.2
18.  Rautenbach  Renault    +  29:09.2
19.  Pressac     Citroen    +  29:12.2
20.  Beres       Suzuki     +  32:33.3