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Petter Solberg leads Ford superspecial sweep on Rally Argentina

Petter Solberg took the early Rally Argentina lead as Ford dominated the Thursday evening superspecial that kicked off the event

On a cold and wet evening, Citroen's choice of hard tyres proved to be a significant disadvantage, with works drivers Sebastien Loeb and Mikko Hirvonen ending the 6.04-kilometre stage back in eighth and 11th places respectively, both over 10 seconds off the lead.

Ford went for soft tyres and swept the top five positions, with factory driver Solberg leading his temporary team-mate Dani Sordo - substituting for the injured Jari-Matti Latvala - by 3.6s.

Portugal winner Mads Ostberg (Adapta) completed the top three, ahead of M-Sport duo Ott Tanak and Evgeny Novikov.

Citroen's lead runner is currently its Junior team driver Thierry Neuville in sixth place, while Volkswagen has both its S2000 Skoda Fabias inside the top 10 - as Sebastien Ogier holds seventh and Andreas Mikkelsen sits 10th, behind Armindo Araujo's Team Portugal Mini.

Nasser Al-Attiyah had a spin on the stage and is back in 13th in the Qatar Citroen.

The full-length stages commence on Friday morning.

Leading positions after SS1:

Pos  Driver             Team/Car        Time/Gap
 1.  Petter Solberg     Ford             4m54.9s
 2.  Dani Sordo         Ford              + 3.6s
 3.  Mads Ostberg       Adapta Ford       + 4.8s
 4.  Ott Tanak          M-Sport Ford      + 5.2s
 5.  Evgeny Novikov     M-Sport Ford      + 5.2s
 6.  Thierry Neuville   Citroen Junior    + 5.6s
 7.  Sebastien Ogier    VW Skoda          + 8.0s
 8.  Sebastien Loeb     Citroen          + 10.2s
 9.  Armindo Araujo     Portugal Mini    + 11.7s
10.  Andreas Mikkelsen  VW Skoda         + 12.7s

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