SS11: Solberg continues to fly

Petter Solberg has claimed his second stage win in succession on Philips Rally Argentina with the fastest time through the repeat of the Amboy-Santa Monica test in his Ford Fiesta RS WRC.

Solberg is battling back from the time lost when he retired on stage four of the event on Friday afternoon. He has climbed to 10th overall and said: “I’ve really found the right feeling with this car, I can do anything with this car.”

Out front, Sebastien Loeb continues to edge clear in his pursuit of a 70th victory in the FIA World Rally Championship powered by Nokia. Loeb was second quickest, 2.9s down on Solberg, and leads Citroen team-mate Mikko Hirvonen by 7.7s in the overall classification with two stages of day two left to run.

“It’s a beautiful stage and there was no reason to push any harder,” explained Loeb.

Hirvonen said: “I wasn’t expecting the stage to be so rough second time through so you need to be careful with the rocks but it was still a good stage.”

Dani Sordo reached the stage finish with the front-left tyre off its rim. The stand-in Ford driver was fourth quickest behind Hirvonen.

Mads Ostberg said he was concentrating on improving his pace notes for next season on his way to the fifth fastest time for the Adapta World Rally Team. M-Sport Fiesta driver Ott Tanak was sixth quickest with Thierry Neuville next up in his Citroen.

Martin Prokop reported no problems in his Autotek Fiesta on his way to the 10th fastest time behind Evgeny Novikov and Volkswagen Motorsport’s Sebastien Ogier.

Behind Andreas Mikkelsen, who was 11th fastest, Armindo Araujo was 12th quickest for WRC Team MINI Portugal with Daniel Oliveira 13th for the Brazil World Rally Team.