Citroen World Rally Team (CWRT) driver and eight-times World Rally Champion Sebastien Loeb was looking for a victory to increase his lead in the championship as he goes all-out for a record ninth title, but it was Jari-Matti Latvala of the Ford World Rally Team (FWRT) that took victory by a comfortable margin of nearly 28 seconds, his first win since Rally Sweden in February.
The battle for second place was a titanic struggle between crowd favourites Petter Solberg of FWRT and Loeb, the position changing hands constantly and the margin between these two former world champions just 0.1 seconds on the penultimate stage.