ANTALYA, Turkey, 28 June 2004 — Citroen’s Sebastien Loeb extended his lead in the world championship standings with victory in the Rally of Turkey yesterday.
The Frenchman finished 26.2 seconds ahead of Marcus Gronholm and 36.7 in front of world champion Petter Solberg for his fourth win of the season and his second ever on gravel.
He heads the drivers’ standings with 53 points, nine more than Norwegian Solberg with Estonia’s Markko Martin third on 34.
Loeb had briefly lost the race lead to Finland’s Gronholm on Saturday, but recovered to start the final day with an advantage of 25.9 seconds over the Peugeot driver after a 10-second time penalty for jumping the start of stage nine was rescinded.
The Frenchman said he was lucky to finish after his Citroen had a seized rear wheel bearing on the final stage, which resulted in a small wheel fire. He finished the race on three wheels after removing the tire.
“We got to the end of the stage and everyone was congratulating us, but we knew that things were far from being over,” Loeb told the World Rally Championship website.
“Luckily we managed to sort out the problem. It has been a tough rally and, although we’ve now got a good lead in the drivers’ championship, we can’t relax,” he added. “There’s a long way to go before the end of the season.”
Subaru’s Solberg finished the rally strongly, tying with Loeb for stage 15 and winning the last two stages.
“I was pushing very hard,” said the Norwegian. “We tried everything we could to catch the guys ahead but, with an 18-second gap, it was always going to be unlikely that I would get higher unless one of the cars ahead had a serious problem.”
Twice world champion Gronholm said he was fortunate to finish second after a problem with his gearbox on the penultimate stage.
“Generally it has not been too bad a rally, but the gearbox problem was a bit of a drama,” said the Finn. “Thanks to the advice of the engineers, we were able to fix it rapidly but we had to work hard for our second place here.”
Gronholm remains fourth in the standings on 32 points.
