SS1: Opening stage honours for Solberg

Petter Solberg leads Philips Rally Argentina after going quickest on the event’s first stage in Villa Carlos Paz.

Driving a Ford Fiesta RS WRC, Solberg clocked a time of 4m54.9s through the 6.04-kilometre test. Solberg, from Norway, went up against Sebastien Loeb, the man he trails by four points in the FIA World Rally Championship powered by Nokia.

Solberg selected Michelin’s soft compound tyre while Loeb opted for the hard compound version. Solberg was fastest by 3.6s ahead of stand-in team-mate Dani Sordo, while Loeb dropped 10.2s and was seventh fastest in his Citroen DS3 WRC.

“It feels good,” Solberg said. “A tricky stage to start off with so maybe we were too careful.”

Loeb said: “It was a really bad tyre choice; it felt very slippery.”

Vodafone Rally de Portugal winner Mads Ostberg was third quickest in his Adapta Fiesta. M-Sport Ford team-mates Evgeny Novikov and Ott Tanak shared the fourth fastest time with Citroen Junior Thierry Neuville sixth and Sebastien Ogier seventh in his Super 2000-specification Volkswagen Motorsport Skoda Fabia.

Behind eighth-placed Loeb, Armindo Araujo was ninth quickest in his WRC Team MINI Portugal John Cooper Works WRC with Andreas Mikkelsen 10th in his Fabia.

Nasser Al-Attiyah lost ground when he spun his Qatar World Rally Team Citroen. He was 13th fastest, one position ahead of leading Production Car World Rally Championship runner and top local driver Marcos Ligato.

The action resumes with stage two, Fernet 1882 La Pampa/La Pampa, which gets underway at 07:28hrs local time on Friday morning and measures 37.51 kilometres in length.