 Loeb remained well in contention despite his time penalty |
World champion Sebastien Loeb was left reflecting on his bad luck after receiving a 10-second penalty on the first day of the Swedish Rally. Loeb was late at a checkpoint after the bonnet on his Citroen flew open, forcing him to stop and secure it.
It cost him a 10-second penalty and means he trails world title rival Marcus Gronholm by 10.2 seconds.
Gronholm won Friday's first two stages for Ford but was pegged back by Loeb and his Citroen on the next four runs.
Loeb blamed an extra set of headlights, which he needed to remove after stage two, for the mishap.
He said: "We took the lamp hood off at the end of the first stage and we did not close the bonnet completely. It came up on the road section, and we had to stop and close it."
The top two are almost a minute clear of third placed Gianluigi Galli in his privateer Mitsubishi after surging up the leaderboard.
Last year's winner Petter Solberg suffered a disappointing day after the rear driveshaft on his Subaru broke and he then received a time penalty of two minutes and 10 seconds to slip down to 18th place.
MMIX
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