Loeb edges Gronholm in Japan to claim record

Double world champion Sebastien Loeb clinched a record 27th career victory yesterday when he won the Rally of Japan for the first time to tighten his stranglehold on this year's championship.

The Frenchman, driving a Citroen for the Kronos team, beat Ford's Marcus Gronholm by 5.6 seconds after 27 stages on the loose gravel roads around Obihiro in the northern island of Hokkaido.

Loeb, who now leads the Finn by 33 points with five rounds of the championship remaining and a third title in a row all but won, already held the records for most wins in a single season (10) and most in a row (six).

He had shared the record of 26 wins with retired Spaniard Carlos Sainz.

However, the 32-year-old Loeb has taken less than four years to rack up his record tally of wins since his first in Germany in 2002 and can be expected to take many more as the sport's dominant driver. "Oh I don't know. Hopefully," the 'Michael Schumacher of rallying' told reporters when asked whether he was now the best driver in the history of the championship.

Ford's Mikko Hirvonen, Gronholm's team-mate and compatriot, finished the rally in third place. He also won the final super-special, the only driver other than Loeb and Gronholm to win stages in Japan this year.

Australian Chris Atkinson finished fourth for Subaru, who struggled with brake problems in their home event, with Austrian Manfred Stohl fifth in a Peugeot.

Japan's Toshi Arai was sixth in a Subaru with 2004 winner Petter Solberg seventh after the post-race exclusion of Loeb's Spanish team-mate Dani Sordo for not fastening his seat belts in one of the stages. In the manufacturers' championship, Kronos have 132 points and lead Ford by 11.

Gronholm, last year's winner and himself a double champion, won 15 of the stages but paid the price for two big mistakes on Saturday morning that cost him more than 30 seconds and the lead.

Despite that, he pushed hard on Sunday in the closest battle he and Loeb have had all year.

Hard fight

"That was a really great fight with Seb," said the tall Finn.

"I was on the limit all day... I tried so hard to catch him and I just needed one more stage and a few extra kilometres and I would have done."

Loeb agreed it had been a hard fight. "I pushed at 100 per cent and sometimes even more when it was necessary," he said in a team statement.

"How was that for close? At the start of the final leg, I thought that the eight points for second place would have been a good result for the championship," he added.

"Then we took the decision just to go for it, to try everything. The fight was too good just to walk away and settle for second."

The win was Loeb's seventh of the season to Gronholm's four. Japan, which made its championship debut in 2004, was one of just three rallies that he had yet to win.