SS12: Loeb starts rebuilding his advantage

After Mikko Hirvonen’s late-morning charge reduced his Citroen team-mate Sebastien Loeb’s Brother Rally New Zealand lead to just 1.7 seconds, the eight-time World Rally champion struck back on the first stage of the Saturday afternoon loop and edged out a 4.8s lead once again.

Loeb was quickest of all on the Waipu Gorge stage, while Hirvonen was only sixth - and admitted he had not been at his best.

"He’s going to be faster now," Hirvonen admitted even before Loeb came through. "Maybe the lunchbreak was too long for me and I wasn’t awake on this one... We’ll try again on the next one. I just didn’t drive well on this one."

Citroen has insisted that it is not thinking about asking its drivers to hold position yet, and Loeb confirmed that he was now accepting this was - at least for the time being - a flat-out head-to-head intra-team fight for victory.

"We pushed hard but it was dirty and very slippery," said Loeb. "I just drove like I know to do: flat-out. In the previous stages in the morning I didn’t want to take these big risks to fight with my team-mate, and then in the end I understood I have to. So this time I drove flat-out and it was better."

M-Sport Ford drivers Ott Tanak and Evgeny Novikov took impressive second and third places on the stage, between Loeb and works Ford duo Petter Solberg and Jari-Matti Latvala, but with times very close on the short stage the overall positions remained unchanged.