Loeb wins opening super special

The stage was run on a two kilometre figure of eight circuit with Loeb shading Sordo by just three tenths of a second.

"If the rest of the rally goes like this, it will be great," said Loeb. "Tonight, my priority was not to make any mistakes and not to lose much time, so leading is a good position to be in. But we'll have to wait until tomorrow before we get to the proper Rally Finland stages."

There was a tie for third place between championship leader Mikko Hirvonen's Ford and Chris Atkinson's Subaru. The pair were also just one tenth slower than Sordo. Petter Solberg was fifth for Subaru and Jari-Matti Latvala rounded out the top six for Ford.

The first day proper of the 1000 Lakes gets underway early in the morning, with the cars beginning Vellipohja, the first of nine gravel stages, at 07:30. The rally returns to Killeri later tomorrow evening.