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Jari-Matti Latvala - Source: Photosport -
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Finland's Jari-Matti Latvala maintained his lead in the Rally of Italy on Sunday after world champion Sebastien Loeb suffered a puncture and all but dropped out of contention.
Latvala holds a 9.9 second advantage over Ford team mate and compatriot Mikko Hirvonen ahead of Sunday's final stages on the gravel roads of Sardinia.
Frenchman Loeb, bidding for a sixth straight world title having won all five of this season's rallies, had a puncture on stage 11 but managed a quick tyre change to stay fourth overall behind Petter Solberg.
"Now I'll try to catch third, it's the only thing I can do," Loeb told the World Rally website (www.wrc.com). "This rally has been a difficult one from the start. It hasn't gone as we wanted it to and we had some bad luck."
The Citroen driver, who took the day's final stage to lie one minute 14.8 adrift of Latvala, also suffered a brake problem early on and miscalculated a timing.
Hirvonen, third overall and 20 points behind Loeb, had difficulties of a different nature on the day's second leg. "We came across two groups of horses running wild in the stage," he said.
"After about one kilometre we almost had to stop for a group of about eight. We lost about five seconds there. Then a couple of kilometres later we found another two."
