At the end of the opening day of competition in the Rally of Turkey, Frenchman Sébastien Ogier heads the field. The Citroën Junior Team driver is a mere 5.5 seconds ahead of Dani Sordo with Ford driver Mikko Hirvonen in third position.

This year’s Rally of Turkey has moved to Istanbul, the world’s fifth largest city, and spans both Europe and Asia.

While these stages have been used before in other championships, as this is the first time the WRC event has been based in Istanbul all the stages are new to the WRC crews.

The gravel roads are fast and wide and, while largely gravel, four stages have sections of Tarmac. In total, 316.10 kilometres of the competitive route is gravel and the remaining 42.74 kilometres is Tarmac.

As none of the crews have previous knowledge of the stages, competition has been tight at the top of the leaderboard and the lead changed place three times in the first four stages. Petter Solberg took the initial advantage but was then overhauled in the second stage by Hirvonen. By the third stage, Ogier had taken command and the Frenchman maintained his lead throughout the day by winning a total of three of the day’s nine stages. Both Sordo and Hirvonen had a trouble-free day to stay within striking distance of the lead.

Behind the leading trio, Petter Solberg is fourth. The Norwegian led after the first stage but dropped to sixth after the second and has been in a close battle with Sébastien Loeb and Jari-Matti Latvala throughout the day. Loeb is placed in an uncharacteristic fifth position but he and Latvala remain in the fight for victory, with the top six all within 30 seconds of each other. Federico Villagra holds seventh with Kimi Räikkönen eighth.

Not all crews escaped the day without problems; both Henning Solberg and Ken Block retired early in the day with broken steering.

Rally of Turkey - Results after Day 1