Citroen's five-time World Rally Champion Sebastien Loeb has claimed his fifth victory from five rallies so far into the 2009 season, using Pirelli tyres. Rally Argentina, the only round of this year's WRC to be held in South America, encompassed a wide variety of surfaces and weather conditions, making it a truly formidable challenge for the soft-compound Pirelli Scorpion rubber.
 

As always, Rally Argentina contained two of the best known stages on the entire World Rally Championship: Giulio Cesare and El Condor, run this year on the second day of the event.

 

After seven changes of leader on the opening day, Loeb took advantage of a better road position on the second day to move clear of the field. On the final day, the Citroen driver who was equipped with Pirelli tyres, was able to control his winning margin and claim his 52nd career victory ahead of teammate Dani Sordo and Ford's Jari-Matti Latvala.
 

Loeb's win now gives him a 19-point lead over Sordo in the drivers' championship, and 20 on Hirvonen, while Citroen now extends its lead over Ford in the manufacturers' rankings to 39 points.
 

In Argentina they have had a very dry summer which meant that a number of roads were already in bad condition before the rally started, with the surface degrading considerably during the second run over the stages. The crews faced mostly dry and dusty roads on the opening day of the rally but conditions worsened over the weekend with rain coming on Saturday and forming deep ruts in the stages.
 

Despite the varying roads and weather conditions throughout the rally, which ranged from 10 to more than 25 degrees Centigrade during the day, the soft-compound of the Pirelli Scorpion gravel tyres, of the sort that will also be used in Finland and Great Britain, performed extremely well in the challenge.
 

None of the leading runners reported any major problems with punctures, in spite of the notoriously sharp rocks that littered the route, enabling a four-way fight for the lead on the opening day. Pirelli's Scorpion rubber also enabled the privateer Citroen Xsara WRC of former World Rally Champion Petter Solberg to join the battle for the podium before he encountered mechanical problems.