Loeb remains in charge

Sebastien Loeb remained on course for a fourth consecutive victory at the Rally Argentina, winning three of the nine stages on Saturday to put his Citroen nearly 80 seconds clear of second-placed Petter Solberg.

Solberg won five stages, including four in the afternoon, to keep the pressure on Loeb and open up a 49-second gap over his Subaru team-mate Chris Atkinson, who was in third place.

The second Citroen, driven by Daniel Sordo, was fourth, more than three and a half minutes behind Loeb with the rest of the cars well off the pace after a day of high attrition.

Loeb held a one-and-a-half minute lead over Atkinson after the opening day with Solberg a further eight seconds behind, but the Norwegian moved up to second with a commanding win in the day’s first stage.

He was able to reduce Loeb’s advantage by 15.5 seconds but the Frenchman re-asserted himself by winning the 11th and 12th stages to move one minute 34.5 seconds ahead of Solberg.

Solberg chipped away at Loeb’s lead during the course of the day, claiming four of the five afternoon stages, but with only three stages remaining on Sunday, Loeb is in a strong position, one minute 19.6 seconds ahead of the Norwegian.

Atkinson appeared to be making up ground on Solberg when he won the final stage of the morning to close within 4.1 seconds of his team-mate but the Australian lost ground in the afternoon and was 48.9 seconds back at the end of the day.

With Subaru within sight of their first double podium finish since 2003, Atkinson seemed prepared to accept third place.

“I’ve backed right off,” said Atkinson. “I’m not going slowly but there’s no need to take any risks.

“The points for Subaru are the biggest priority now. Of course second place would be nice, but I still have a chance for my third podium from four rallies - which is a better start to the season than I had originally hoped for.”

Sordo was comfortably in fourth place with rookie WRC driver Conrad Rautenbach a further 14-and-a-half minutes behind in fifth.

Mikko Hirvonen, who claimed three of the first four stages on the first day before crashing out jumped from 23rd to sixth but remains nearly 25 minutes behind Loeb.

There were a number of retirements on the second day with Jari-Matti Latvala, Gigi Galli and Henning Solberg not rejoining after encountering problems in the morning while Britain’s Matthew Wilson went out when he broke his suspension on the 15th stage, when in sixth place.