02/10/2009
RallyRACC, Day 1: Citroën dominates with Dani Sordo leader from Sébastien Loeb

Dani Sordo (Citroën). RallyRACC 2009

Complete dominance of the Spanish driver Dani Sordo (Citroën C4 WRC) in the 11th round of the WRC, the 45 RallyRACC Catalunya-COSTA DAURADA, Rally de España. The first day started today in PortAventura and finished with the odds on Citroen’s side, as the second  place was for Sébastien Loeb,  joined by Petter Solberg, fourth, and Sébastien Ogier, fifth, with  Mikko Hirvonen in between.

The RallyRACC started with a loop of three stages: La Mussara (20.48 km), Querol (21.26 km) and El Montmell (24.14 km), where the 70 authorized participants had to run twice, under a sunny and dry weather, with some wind at the beginning of the day, apart from some wet patches in the first loop due to the overnight rain.

Citroen made their intentions clear from the beginning. Dani Sordo started the rally winning the first loop of stages, although his teammate in Citroën, Sébastien Loeb, finished behind Mikko Hirvonen (Ford) in the first stage. The situation changed in the following stages, where Loeb overtook Hirvonen, thus forming a Citroen 1-2 that was not to be broken for the rest of the day.

Hirvonen started a bit cautious, as he did not feel too confident with the wet patches in the first pass. The situation and the times improved a lot in the second pass, where the differences were not as big as in the morning. The complete dominance of Citroen was proved not only by Sordo and Loeb’s one-two but also by the great performance of Petter Solberg, in his debut with the Citroën C4 WRC, and also the recovery of Sébastien Ogier (Citroën).

In the second loop, Sordo won the first stage, while Loeb set the fastest time in the following two, his first two victories at the RallyRACC, which helped him reduce Sordo’s advantage and ended the day with a difference of only 1.9 seconds. Mikko Hirvonen (Ford) could not keep the pace of the leaders and finished the day with more than half-second behind the Citroën, which also have Petter Solberg and Sébastien Ogier as two perfect reinforces, in fourth and fifth place. Jari-Matti Latvala (Ford) did not have a very good day on the asphalt routes of Tarragona. In the Junior class, Martin Prokop (Citroën) leads the provisional classification followed by Hans Weijs (Citroën).