Petter Solberg leads Rally Mexico after day one

Citroen privateer driver Petter Solberg holds a 15 second lead of Rally Mexico this evening after a sensational performance through the opening day of the competition.

The 2003 World Rally Champion made the most of an advantageous start position of eighth on the road, and a racing line swept of loose gravel, to go fastest in his C4 World Rally Car on five of the day’s nine stages.

The Norwegian, who took his last rally win on this event in 2005, declined to play any tactical manoeuvres to improve his road position for day two, and will face the worst of the slippery conditions as first car on the road on Saturday.

"I didn’t want to use tactics; I prefer to go flat out and see where we end up," said Solberg at the end of Friday’s final stage. "It’s been a very good day and I’m very happy. This makes up for the disappointment in Sweden. When everything works properly it’s good fun."

Second place this evening is Citroen Junior Team driver Sebastien Ogier, also in a C4 World Rally Car. Also benefiting from a cleaner racing line today, thanks to his position of fifth in the start order, Ogier won four stages outright and was runner up to Solberg on the other five.

"We’ve made a good start with no problems and the car worked very well," said Ogier. "Yes our good road position helped a lot and for that reason tomorrow will be difficult for sure. But overcoming that sort of thing is part of the game and I have to learn it. It will be hard to conserve my position but I’ll try my best."

Defending World Champion Sebastien Loeb is third, 12.5sec behind Ogier, after a day spent trying to make the best of a less than ideal start position. "Obviously second on the road today wasn’t as bad as being first, and in the circumstances I don’t think we could have done any better," said Loeb. "It’s been a very good day first day for me, and I’m satisfied to be third on the road tomorrow - I think it is going to be okay."

After a trouble-free day, Citroen Total driver Dani Sordo is fourth, 13.3seconds adrift of his team-mate and looking forward to Saturday’s competition. "Today has been a very good result - especially for tomorrow’s road position," said the Spaniard. "I’m really happy about the way things have gone so far, but I’m still expecting the roads to be slippery tomorrow. There’s still a long way to go..."

The BP Ford Abu Dhabi World Rally Team duo of Jari-Matti Latvala and series leader Mikko Hirvonen struggled to master the slippery gravel stages in their Ford Focuses and hold fifth and sixth positions respectively. "I can’t be happy because we have been a bit too far away from the Citroens today," said Latvala. "I made no big mistakes and didn’t nothing silly, so in that sense it’s been good, but it’s surprising how good the Citroens have been today. I’ve tried to go as fast as I can but it seems they’re still ahead of us."

Hirvonen, acting as unwilling road sweeper through each of Friday’s stages, returned to Leon extremely disappointed. "We lost a lot of time to the Citroen’s being first car on the road today, but in the afternoon I still don’t understand why we were so slow," he said. "The first two (repeated) stages were very messy and slippery, but the last one (SS7) felt better - it was a perfect stage a really good drive and yet we still lost nearly 10 seconds. If it’s like this tomorrow we don’t have a chance. I’m ashamed of my driving today."

Petter’s elder brother Henning holds seventh place in a Stobart Ford Focus, his colleague Matthew Wilson is eighth, Munchi’s Rally Team’s Federico Villagra holds ninth position and American rookie Ken Block rounds off the top 10.

Former F1 World Champion Kimi Raikkonen retired from the event after a high-speed roll on stage seven. His Citroën C4 is reported to have rolled six times in a fast bend.

Rally standings after SS9: