Loeb pins penalty on extra lights

The bonnet on Loeb's car became loose, hitting the screen of his car and forcing him to stop on the road between SS1 and SS2. He therefore checked in late at the second time control, which led to his time penalty.

Loeb and co-driver Daniel Elena had used extra lights for the darker SS1 this morning, and had opened the bonnet previously to remove them from the front of their car. However, on doing this the latching pins had not been put down correctly.

"We had extra lights on for the first stage so we had to stop after the stage to take them off," Loeb told autosport.com. "We had to open the bonnet to disconnect them and we forgot to the pins in.

"We were two kilometres from the next stage and it took a while to get the bonnet back down and the pins back in.

"The next stage was OK apart from where the sun was shining in the stage. And then we couldn't so see so much as the screen was damaged."

Loeb is currently 19.0 seconds behind leader Gronholm.