[Rally Poland Day 1] Ford’s Hirvonen Leads

BP Abu Dhabi Team driver Mikko Hirvonen leads Rally Poland after the first full day of competition in round eight of the 2009 FIA World Rally Championship, a day on which championship leader Sebastien Loeb crashed out for the second event in succession.

Feeling right at home on high-speed gravel stages which resembled those of his native Finland, Hirvonen edged ahead of Loeb and the Citroen Total Citroen C4 and into a slim lead on Friday’s second stage (SS3).

But his lead became far more secure on SS4 when Loeb retired from the day after crashing into a tree stump.

Loeb’s exit promoted Hirvonen’s teammate Jari-Matti Latvala into second place and despite pressure from a hard-charging Dani Sordo in the remaining factory Citroen, the Ford pair held formation for the rest of the day.

The prospect of a second consecutive Ford 1-2 after Loeb dominated the first part of the season raises hopes the fight for the championship will be well and truly alive when the WRC heads to the New South Wales Northern Rivers in 68 days’ time for round 10, Repco Rally Australia.

Tickets for Rally Australia went on sale on-line this week at Ticketek.com.au.

The lead drivers could have been forgiven for taking things a little easier on the afternoon stages in Poland, but on SS5 Latvala thumped in a stage win to close the gap on his teammate to only 1.4 sec.

Hirvonen’s response was swift and brutal. On SS6 he set a time 8.2 sec. quicker than anybody and completed the day with a lead of 8.9 sec.

“It’s been a fantastic day,” Hirvonen said. “I’ve really enjoyed it even on the repeated stages; the conditions weren’t so bad, we’ve had a lot of fun.”

Latvala agreed with his teammate. “It’s been really good, with no problems at all and the car is working well,” he said.

“Mikko has gone well. I must say his time through the second stage this afternoon was unbelieveable – otherwise I’ve had a really good day! Dani is pushing us both hard; tomorrow we need to keep him behind.”

Sordo completed the day 28.1 sec. adrift of Latvala’s second place.

Privateer Petter Solberg emerged fourth in his Citroen Xsara after an exciting scrap with fellow Norwegian Andreas Mikkelsen ended when the engine in the latter’s Skoda expired on the 22 km last stage.

“I pushed big time, You have to respect these stages but they are good fun to drive,” the 2003 World Champion said.

Petter’s elder brother Henning rounded out the top five after a frustrating day in his Stobart VK team Ford Focus.

Olivier Quesnel, team director of Citroen Racing, said he did not consider Loeb’s retirement from Rally Poland to be the result of driver error.

“What happened was he was opening the road and if you see the on-board video it was honestly impossible for him to see the stump. Usually he is lucky. This time he was not,” Quesnel said.

Loeb will resume the rally on Saturday and attempt to salvage some points for the manufacturers and drivers championships, but faces a significant challenge to defend his position in the standings with Hirvonen only seven points behind after the seventh round in Greece two weekends ago.

The Citroen Junior Team’s teenage Russian driver Evgeny Novikov, co-driven by Australian Dale Moscatt, was another to crash on SS4 and retire from the day.

“Three corners from the end of the stage, we went over a crest a little too quickly. We went off the road and broke the suspension,” Novikov said.

“Then we tried to fix the problem but it wasn’t possible. So we will start again tomorrw under the Super Rally system.”

Moscatt gave a more dramatic description of what happened: “We had a big off over a crest at warp factor five billion!”