Sebastien Loeb took his fourth win in succession in Corsica on Sunday, but the end of the event was somewhat marred by Ford's use of tactics to move
Mikko Hirvonen up to second.
Loeb completely dominated the thirteenth round in the World Rally Championship, and just like in Spain last weekend, was in a class of his own, leading from start-to-finish in his Citroen C4 WRC car much to the delight of his home fans.
In total he won 14 of the 16 tests, eventually triumphing by over 3 minutes - although the strategy adopted by the 'Blue Oval' prior to the last test made the margin look double what it should have been.
It was Seb's tenth victory of the year and his fifth in a row - following wins in Finland, Germany, New Zealand and Spain. Loeb now extends his championship lead to 14 points and with just two rounds to go only needs to score 6 more points to make sure of a record fifth title - something never before done in the history of the WRC.
BP Ford Abu Dhabi's Mikko Hirvonen had been second pretty much throughout, until a puncture in the first test on Sunday dropped him behind fellow Ford runners
Francois Duval and
Jari-Matti Latvala. He still took the runners-up spot though, as Duval and Latvala purposely picked up time penalties prior to SS16, which dropped them behind the Finn and down to third and fourth.
Petter Solberg completed the top five for
Subaru - he also lost time with a puncture on the final day, two in fact - while
Chris Atkinson was sixth in the sister Impreza WRC2008 and
Urmo Aava seventh.
Matthew Wilson rounded out the points' scorers in eighth, with Mads Ostberg and Barry Clark ninth and tenth respectively, followed by Andreas Mikkelsen, Khalid Al-Qassimi and
Toni Gardemeister - the latter picking up the final manufacturers' point for
Suzuki in 13th place.
Citroen's Dani Sordo and Subaru 'third' driver Brice Tirabasi were the two major retirements - the former crashed out on day 1 in SS3, while Tirabassi was forced out on the final day with mechanical problems.
Full report and result to follow...
