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Sebastien Loeb [right] wins the Rally of Cyprus - Source: Reuters -
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Frenchman Sebastien Loeb earned his 50th victory in the World Rally Championship (WRC) on Monday, with a comfortable win in Cyprus.
Loeb, in a Citroen, won by 27.2 seconds over Mikko Hirvonen in a Ford Focus after the Finn narrowed Saturday's 49.8-second gap in three gravel stages through the Troodos mountains.
Norway's Petter Solberg, in an ageing Citroen Xsara, came third.
"Im very happy with what I've achieved but I'm not finished yet. Next I'm going for 51," said Loeb, who won a record fifth world title last season.
Co-driver Daniel Elena said: "It feels really nice. Now the important thing is to try and get all 12 wins this year."
Loeb and Elena won the opening two stages of this year's
12-country circuit in Ireland and Norway and led the Cyprus Rally
from Saturday's start. Hirvonen said the weather had not helped
him.
"If it were drier the result might have been different but that's
how it is. We were faster today, though. Hopefully we can take that
speed to Portugal." Solberg became the first private entrant to
make a WRC podium since Toni Gardemeister on the 2005 Monte Carlo
rally.
He edged out Dani Sordo in a Citroen C4 in the penultimate stage on Sunday, in spite of earlier gear selection problems while trying to navigate a hairpin bend in fourth.
The former Subaru driver, world champion in 2003, was left out in the cold when the Japanese manufacturer quit the WRC late last year, and he decided to put together his own rally team.
"I know this is an old car, and maybe Citroen would like to finish ahead, but they should be proud of how good the Xsara still is," Solberg said.
Cyprus is the only mixed-surface event in the WRC calendar and recent rain turned normally hard-packed tracks into muddy trails.
"It was really muddy in there and we ran out of windscreen washer fluid, so we had trouble seeing," said Briton Matthew Wilson in a Ford Focus, who was fifth.
The next leg of the WRC, the Rally of Portugal, runs from April 2 to 5.
