With 8 stages remaining in the Jordan event, the Frenchman from Citroen decided that 31.6 seconds will be enough to hold off Loeb for the win tomorrow, even though he will open the road for his rivals from beginning to end. With everybody slowing down in SS12 for strategy reasons, Ogier decided to go flat out and won it by a whopping 18 seconds from privateer Petter Solberg.
The Norwegian will start tomorrow's running from 4th place, 2.2 seconds behind Ford's Jari-Matti Latvala, who lost more than 8 seconds to Loeb in the last stage in order to have a better attacking position from 3rd place tomorrow.
Ford's Mikko Hirvonen will start tomorrow's action more than 2 and a half minutes behind Ogier, as he struggled to find pace at the wheel of his Fiesta RS WRC when opening the roads on Friday. Additionally, a power steering issue at his car hampered his progress throughout the day.
Kimi Raikkonen ended Day 1 in 6th place, just behind Hirvonen and ahead of another driver racing on a Fiesta RS WRC, Stobart's Matthew Wilson. Khalin Al Qassimi and Federico Villagra are next in the standings, followed inside the Top 10 by Nasser Al-Attiyah.
After Henning Solberg ended his rally early on, when hitting a rock and damaging his engine beyond repair, a second driver from Stobart had to call it a day on Friday, as Mads Ostberg retired from the running due to a gearbox problem.
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