Mikko Hirvonen opened up a 15-second lead at Rally Portugal while former double world champion Marcus Gronholm marked his return after 18 months away with an impressive fourth place showing.

Hirvonen grabbed the lead in the afternoon and never relinquished it as he kept the Citroens of Dani Sordo and defending five-time champion Sebastien Loeb behind him.
"I'm 18 seconds ahead of Seb, but that certainly is not enough," said Hirvonen. "But I'm glad to have that gap as I will be first on the road on Saturday."

Subaru Impreza driver Marcus Grönholm, the 2000 and 2002 world champion is fourth, 7.9sec behind Loeb with Petter Solberg rounding off the top five places in his privately entered Citroen Xsara WRC.
Grönholm had moved briefly into second place following Sordo's mistake.
The Finn said he wouldn't be trying to manipulate his road position for Saturday.
"I'll just drive my own rally - I don't like tactics," said the 41-year-old. "Mikko's going well, but who knows what will happen tomorrow. Fourth place is not bad. We had a little unlucky with the pace notes at the start but, little by little, we found our rhythm and went well."

Sordo had led the race up to the fifth stage but then made a mistake to allow Hirvonen to squeeze past.
The Spaniard began that crucial stage with a 3.2 second lead, but dropped to third after overshooting a junction 800 metres from the start just as Loeb had done when the stage was run earlier in the day.

Running first on the road, championship leader Loeb was suffering with loose gravel on the roads over the first three stages, overshooting a junction just 500m into the day's first stage.
He struggled to find grip and pace for the first loop of stages and main rival Hirvonen and Loeb's own teammate Dani Sordo capitalised on his misfortune.

However, it was Jari-Mati Latvala who benefited most, running 7th on the road and with much cleaner conditions.
He set the fastest time on both of the day's two opening stages to build an advantage of 10 seconds going into the last run before the mid-day service.
But the next stage would prove to be his last for the weekend.
He clipped a bank and launched into a frightfully long series of rolls, destroying his Ford Focus RS in the process. Amazingly, after rolling 17 times over a distance of 150 metres, neither Latvala nor co-driver Anttila were seriously harmed.
This accident handed the lead to Sordo as the crews prepared for a repeat run over the same stages, albeit with rougher conditions and more rocks to contend with.

In the first of the afternoon's three stages, Sordo made exactly the same mistake that Loeb did on the first stage in the morning, overshooting at the same junction and losing around 20 seconds in the process.
This was enough for both Hirvonen and Gronholm to leap-frog him to first and second positions respectively.

Sordo retaliated on the next stage with the win but it wasn't enough to get him back to the top of the leaderboard and he retained third, just ahead of Loeb. However, the action wasn't over yet.
Grönholm admitted he'd destroyed his tyres in the long stage and had little tread left for the final test of the afternoon.

And by the time he emerged from the last stage, he had dropped from second to fourth, having been held up by Khalid Al Qassimi, who suffered a turbo failure before the stage even started.
Grönholm also reported problems with the front suspension and holds fourth at the end of the first day, 25.9 seconds behind leader Hirvonen and 7.9secs adrift of Loeb.

Behind the front four is Petter Solberg, who spent the day enjoying the rally and making slight adjustments to his Citroen's suspension to cope with the conditions. Sebastien Ogier also had a good first day, arriving at service in sixth after a steady run to build confidence in his pace notes and in the conditions.

Seventh place is held by Matthew Wilson, who despite several moments during the day, adopted a conservative approach and reaps the benefits.
Eighth and the final points-scoring position is held by young Russian Eugeney Novikov, despite also being held up in Al Qassimi's dust until the Emirati driver stopped to allow him to overtake.

In the FIA Production Car World Rally Championship, Bruno Magalhaes took the early lead in the Peugeot S2000 but his event would be cut short by engine failure on the third stage. This allowed Nasser Al Attiyah to take over the lead, only to hand it to local Armindo Araujo when he rolled and retired in the afternoon.

Emil Brynildsen and Patrik Flodin enjoyed a good battle throughout the day, swapping places several times and eventually, it was Flodin who ended the day second, with Brynildsen third ahead of Martin Prokop.

The FIA Junior World Rally Championship field was dominated by Michal Kosciuszko, who took the win on three of the day's stages to arrive at the Algarve Stadium with a lead of 41 seconds over Yoan Bonato, despite driving 15Km of the penultimate stage and all of the final test with no pace notes, thanks to an intercom failure.

The action on the second day takes the crews further north, for two more loops of three stages, beginning at 09:55 with the 22km Santa Clara stage.