Citroen Junior Team manager Benoit Nogier commented: “We will look at the car when it is back and see if we can re-start under super rally tomorrow. That is certainly our hope, but we can only assess this once we see the car properly.
Reigning FIA World Rally Champion Sébastien Loeb has taken control of Rally Bulgaria, the seventh round of the World Rally Championship. Team-mate Dani Sordo holds second position with Petter Solberg rounding off the top three.While Rally Bulgaria is new to the FIA World Rally Championship calendar, the event has a long history dating back to 1970, when it was known as Rally Zlatni Piassatzi. Formerly based at the Black Sea, the event moved to the Rila Mountains in 2002 and has since had its home in the picturesque ski resort of Borovets, 60 kilometres from the capital Sofia. It is the first of four tarmac events in the second half of the 2010 season.Today’s route took in two loops of two stages covering 118.68 competitive kilometres. Loeb made his mark from the outset and has won each of the day’s stages to pull out a 28.1 second advantage. Behind him, crews have been battling for position, with Ogier climbing to second after the second stage, but then the French Citroën driver went off the road after misunderstanding a pace note. He dropped to seventh after the third stage and only climbed the leaderboard one position when Kimi Räikkönen rolled out of fourth position. Both Räikkönen and co-driver Kaj Lindstrom were unhurt. As a consequence of Ogier’s accident, Sordo climbed to second and maintained his position overnight. Petter Solberg has gone well in his privately-run Citroën C4 WRC and, with a new co-driver, holds third overnight with a healthy advantage over Mikko Hirvonen. Both the Finn and team-mate Jari-Matti Latvala have struggled to match the pace of the Citroëns on tarmac, but hold fourth and fifth respectively. Behind Ogier, in sixth, Per-Gunnar Andersson is seventh in his first competitive outing in the Ford Focus RS WRC. Hungary’s Frigyes Turan holds eighth with Matthew Wilson ninth and Henning Solberg, in a Ford Fiesta S2000, 10th.
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