The repeat run over the flowing Crastazza stage completed the six-stage schedule of Rally Sardinia's opening day, and Jari-Matti Latvala held the lead while teammate Mikko Hirvonen was truly frustrated with his own performance.

The name of the game at this point is to avoid being the first car on the road tomorrow, and therefore being tasked with sweeping aside the top layer of gravel ahead of the other competitors. Being fastest is therefore not necessarily the best option, and carefully calculating the amount of speed one should lose without however falling too back behind in the gaps is the art.
At this game, Sebastien Loeb caught out an angrily surprised Mikko Hirvonen: dropping a massive 25 seconds during this run, the Citroen driver now finds himself behind his rival in third position overall. However, by his comments, the Frenchman might have been expecting to be further back as he commented that he was "not so happy" with his position.
Not realizing that Loeb had dropped much more time than he expected, Hirvonen's voluntary 17-second loss was insufficient to prevent the Finn from being the second car to sweep the gravel on Saturday – ahead of Loeb.

"You can't do it much more wrong than I did now," angrily stated a frustrated Hirvonen, aware that his chances of a rally victory might be slipping away. "Completely, completely my mistake."
Meanwhile, his teammate Jari-Matti Latvala opted to stay away from tactics and push forward to maintain his lead. The Finn's result of 17:57.0 gave him the stage win, as well as the promise of a difficult day tomorrow since he will now have to open the stages.
"It is a slightly bad move," Latvala acknowledged. "But if you want to win you have to be able to drive as the first car on the road. It's not an easy situation, tomorrow will be a hard day for me."

Dani Sordo signed the second-best time for the Citroen team a few seconds off the stage-winning result: "Everything okay, just easy on the tyres because the surface is hard and the temperature is hot. I am exhausted because of the heat!"
Thanks to the Loeb-Hirvonen game, Petter Solberg moved ahead to sign the third-best time on this run, feeling satisfied with his performances despite a few issues with his privateer Citroen Xsara WRC.
"It's not bad," the Norwegian said. "When it's so warm sometimes I feel as if I have no power. The tyres have worn out quite a lot. I am very happy with my day."
Henning Solberg took fourth position aboard a slightly lightened Stobart Ford car, having lost his bonnet earlier. He was followed by Mads Ostberg, who drove with a puncture towards the end of the stage.
Having used this opening day to get a feel for the Sardinian trails, Ostberg promised: "I'll push a bit harder tomorrow; I'm a little bit chicken at the moment!"
Behind the Citroen Junior Team's Evgeny Novikov, Mikko Hirvonen brought his works Ford Focus RS into seventh position as he tried his tactics.
Rounding out the top ten, Matthew Wilson's Stobart Ford preceded Sebastien Loeb's calculated drive into ninth place on this stage, a few seconds ahead of Ford's Khalid Al Qassimi.
Jari-Matti Latvala returns to Olbia this evening in the lead of Rally Sardinia with a 39.8-second advantage that he will need to defend with the disadvantage of pushing the gravel aside tomorrow. Second-placed Mikko Hirvonen will partly benefit from this, but not as much as third-placed Sebastien Loeb, only three seconds away.
Petter Solberg will have three cars sweeping the stages ahead of him, and with a 3.6-second deficit on Loeb, will surely aim to profit from the situation and jump onto the provisional podium.
Evgeny Novikov rounds out the overall top five at the conclusion of Day One.
Six stages appear on the Day Two programme, made up of two loops upon three new itineraries. Rally Sardinia resumes Saturday morning at 08:45 local time with the Sa Linea run.