After Mikko Hirvonen won the opening round of the WRC 2010 season in Sweden, it didn’t take long for reigning champion, Sebastien Loeb, to fight back – as he took the honours at the second round in the Rally of Mexico.

Loeb took his fourth win at Rally Mexico quite convincingly, as he won by a 24.2 second margin over former WRC champion, Petter Solberg, in a non-works Citroen C4 WRC – who himself just managed to edge out Citroen Junior Team driver, Sebastien Ogier, by 1.1 seconds. The two went into the final super-special stage with Ogier ahead by a mere .6 seconds – a lead he was unable to maintain over the former champion.

Loeb was helped by a good road position at the start of the rally, but drove brilliantly during the second half of the event to convert a 24 second deficit over leader Petter Solberg after Leg 1 into a 55 second lead at the end of day 2 – after which he simply cruised to victory, as Solberg and Ogier battled it out till the very end.

Fourth and fifth spots were occupied by Ford teammates, Mikko Hirvonen and Jari-Matti Latvala, as the Ford Focus simply didn’t have the speed to match the Citroens. Latvala, in fact, let Hirvonen through into fourth place on team orders. Hirvonen, nonetheless, claims that his Ford will back on the pace at the next rally in Jordan, after some useful testing in Sardinia – the team is confident of their pace on gravel going into the season.

Former F1 champ, Kimi Raikkonen, meanwhile had another disastrous weekend, as he once again couldn’t keep his car away from the scenery for very long. He bent his steering arm on the first stage, and then crashed out of the rally with multiple rolls on stage seven – so much so that he couldn’t rejoin the rally even under the super-rally format the next day. Kimi, nevertheless, has also got some testing under his belt since Rally Mexico, and will attempt to make it to the finish at the next round in Jordan.

Loeb leads the standing now with 43 points to Hirvonen’s 37, while Ford still leads the manufacturers’ standings – but only by one point over Citroen.