Mikko Hirvonen held off Sébastien Loeb’s final charge today to win Rally Sweden by 42,3 seconds and thus take the lead in the World Championship. The Ford driver is first to score 25 points for victory according to the new system introduced this year.
– I realised after last year, that if a want to win the title I will have to win more rallies. So this was as good start to the season, Hirvonen said afterwards.

Loeb decided to be content to finish second early in the final day of the rally.
– I tried for the first stage, but realised that I could not catch Mikko. So it was better to slow down, than to risk ending up in a snowbank, Loeb said.
Hirvonen further said that the decisive moment of the rally had been the tyre strategy for Saturday afternoon’s loop of stages. Mikko and codriver Jarmo Lehtinen then choose to switch the front tyres with the spares carried in the car already after the first of the loop’s three long forest stages.
Loeb waited till after the second stage to do the same and lost out with an unbalanced car running on fresh front tyres but very worn rear tyres.
After a careful start to the rally, Jari-Matti Latvala confidently moved into his 2010 role as makes points scorer for Ford, finishing third, ahead of Citroëns Dani Sordo, who made some mistakes and lost time.
Sébastien Ogier of the Citroën Junior Team was a first timer in Sweden and drove well to finish fifth, while Henning Solberg saved the family reputation coming home sixth.
Former rally world champion Marcus Gronholm and his fellow Finn and former F1 champion Kimi Raikkonen drew much extra attention to the rally, but both had problems and finished far back. Consolation for Gronholm was that he won his old favourite stage Sagen, while för Kimi it was another valuable session of learning his new game.

Swede PG Andersson took the first victory in the new Super 2000 World Championship SWRC, dominating from start to finish in his Skoda Fabia ahead of Finn Janne Tuohino and Czech driver Martin Prokop both in Ford Fiestas.
In the Production car World Rally Championship, PWRC Patrik Flodin won after leading all the way in his Subaru Impreza. Norwegian Anders Grondal also in i Subaru and reigning champion Armindo Araujo of Portugal finished second and third.
Both Andersson and Flodin had ”wild cards” to score championship points and now lead the respective series, but as yet have not secured budgets to continue in the championship.