Champion Loeb cruises to record 28th victory

World champion Sebastien Loeb cruised to a record 28th career victory in the Rally of Cyprus yesterday, clocking up the fastest overall time after a slow start to the three-day event.

Citroen's Loeb held a 21.2-second overall advantage over key challenger Marcus Gronholm in a Ford. Gronholm, world champion in 2002, had taken an early lead in the event but gave way to Loeb after spinning on a stage on Saturday afternoon.

"I am very happy to win again here, I don't think it can go much better. I gave everything I could from start to finish," said Loeb. It is his eighth win of the season.

"Marcus pushed me very hard for two days. Now we can hopefully go to Turkey and confirm the championship."

A disappointed Gronholm shrugged off his own setback, saying: "We are fighting to win rallies and manufacturers' points. It was a big task to try and catch Seb today. The team decided that it was more important that we confirmed second place and collected championship points."

Gronholm's team-mate Mikko Hirvonen was third overall.

Yesterday's last leg was marked by the cancellation of the "Downtown Special" stage in central Limassol, Cyprus's second largest city.

The Cyprus rally is a mainly off-road event through winding treacherous tracks of the Troodos mountains, making it one of the slowest rallies in the calendar.

For the first time, organisers introduced a 3.4 km route winding through Limassol's narrow streets.

A FIA safety delegate deemed it unsafe because of its location and the number of crowds present and insisted it is run purely as entertainment value to spectators.

Drivers agreed to drive through that stage at normal road speed and not competition speed, but Dani Sorbo was gutted when his Citroen Xsara WRC smacked into concrete barriers placed around a roundabout. He was 10th overall before the incident and his car being towed out of the stage.