Day 1 of Rally Argentina is in the books for the WRC and thus far Dani Sordo has taken a slight 5 second lead over Ford driver Mikko Hirvonen. Sebastian Loeb rounds out the top three in a day that saw a number of lead changes through tough gravel stages. From what I have seen this has been a very entertaining day 1 that saw everybody get in the mix to some degree. Latvala, Loeb, Sordo, and Hirvonen all had a taste of the lead at some point.
P-WRC has also had an interesting first day. Wild card driver and local favorite Gabriel Pazzo currently leads the class with Nassar al-Attiyah in a close second. Al-Attiyah needs a solid finish in this rally to challenge for the title lead but suffered a scare early when the steering began giving problems in the Subaru WRX. Al-Attiyah, which most may know from the Dakar series had very high expectations and has not disappointed thus far. Here are the results for today:
1. 2 Dani SORDO 1:45:11.3 0.0
2. 3 Mikko HIRVONEN 1:45:16.4 +5.1
3. 1 Sebastien LOEB 1:45:27.6 +16.3
4.11 Petter SOLBERG 1:45:30. 2+18.9
5. 6 Henning SOLBERG 1:45:59.2 +47.9
6. 4 Jari-Matti LATVALA 1:46:17.7 +1:06.4
7. 5 Matthew WILSON 1:47:34.3 +2:23.0
8. 9 Federico VILLAGRA 1:47:50.2 +2:38.9
9. 12 Sebastien OGIER 1:48:25.7 +3:14.4
10.8 Conrad RAUTENBACH 1:48:59.5 +3:48.2
11. 154 Nicolás MADERO 1:54:27.2 +9:15.9
12. 159 Gabriel POZZO 1:54:39.5 +9:28.2
13. 150 Nasser AL-ATTIYAH 1:54:46.9 +9:35.6
14. 160 Marcos LIGATO 1:55:00.9 +9:49.6
15. 155 Juan MARCHETTO 1:55:18.7 +10:07.4
16. 133 Toshi ARAI 1:55:52.7 +10:41.4
17. 131 Martin PROKOP 1:55:53.9 +10:42.6
18. 65 Nicolás FUCHS 1:57:46.7 +12:35.4
19. 153 Claudio MENZI 1:58:57.9 +13:46.6
20. 67 Ezequiel CAMPOS 1:59:51.1 +14:39.8