Solberg out in front

As crews returned to Leon for Friday’s midpoint service, Petter Solberg holds a commanding lead of Rally Mexico, with a 17.1sec advantage over the man in second place, Sebastien Ogier.

As expected, road positions on this morning’s dry and dusty stages proved critical to success, with Solberg and Ogier capitalising on their respective positions of fifth and eighth and befitting from a racing line swept of loose gravel by the cars ahead.

Driving similar Citroen C4 World Rally Cars, Solberg and Ogier were first and second fastest on each of the three countryside stages run so far and head a Citroen 1-2-3-4 in the overall standings ahead of Citroen’s two factory team drivers Sebastien Loeb and Dani Sordo.

"It’s very good and a lot of fun to have started like this," said Solberg. "Okay, the road is cleaning, but on some of the stages you don’t gain that much. Either way it’s not bad, we will see this afternoon what we do. For the moment I’m feeling very comfortable and the car works well."

Ogier, who won the J-WRC class in Mexico in 2008 felt positive about his morning’s work. "It’s a good start," said the Citroen Junior team driver. "Generally the car has felt good on the stages, but on SS3 the rear was sliding around a lot, it felt like a puncture, but it turned out to be okay."

Running as second car on the road, and doing a good job in the loose gravel, defending champion Sebastien Loeb holds third place overall, 9sec adrift of Ogier, after moving ahead of his team-mate Dani Sordo on SS3. "The plan is to continue as I am," he said. "There’s nothing more I can do. I’m trying as hard as possible but the road cleaning is very important. Mikko is losing a lot, but the guys behind are making big gains."

Eleven seconds behind Sordo in fifth place, a frustrated Jari-Matti Latvala was the first of the Ford drivers. Despite having a better road position than Loeb, the Finn had no answer to the Frenchman’s pace. "I was happier with my driving on the second and third stages, but the Citroen drivers are really quick. I don’t know how I can get that time back. My car is sliding around a lot but okay, that’s probably the same for everybody," he said.

Running first through Friday’s stages, Hirvonen rounded off the morning in sixth place, 55sec off Solberg’s lead. "My driving is okay but there’s so much loose gravel on the road I can’t do anything," he said. "I tried to push harder on the second stage but had a massive moment - I was very lucky. There’s nothing more I can do. Being first on the road is really, really bad."

After clouting a rock on Friday’s opening stage, then stopping on SS2 for more than 35 minutes, Citroen Junior Team driver Kimi Raikkonen managed to get his C4 WRC going again and completed the morning loop.

"We bent a steering arm a little on SS1 and that meant we couldn’t go full speed there, but we changed it on the road section to SS3 and it seemed okay. Then suddenly, about 3kms in, the car stopped. We discovered that an electrical connector had come loose on the fuel pump, unfortunately it took a long time for us to find that," he explained.

Rally standings after SS4: