KEY POINTS:
Three hundred and fifty three kilometres, 18 stages and the winning margin was only 0.3 seconds, the closest in World Rally Championship history.
After a breathtaking final day, Ford's Marcus Gronholm finally escaped the clutches of Citroen's Sebastian Loeb to claim the 11th round Rally of New Zealand.
Gronholm held his nerve over three days to stare down Loeb and claim his record-breaking fifth Rally New Zealand.
It all came down to the wire at the final super special stage at Mystery Creek, Hamilton, where Gronholm was just 0.7s in front of Loeb at the start. Despite the Frenchman winning the stage, it was not enough to retake the lead from Gronholm. "Coming into the last stage, I knew I had to attack everything," said Gronholm. "There was no space for looking and I had to go flat out."
Loeb tried everything to overtake Gronholm's lead but to no avail. "The gap [shows] a very good fight right to the end," said Loeb. "Marcus won, what can you do? I was pushing hard."
The battle for the lead started first thing yesterday morning when Gronholm set the fastest stage time to sneak back in front of Loeb, the over-night leader. Loeb won the next stage through Te Hutewai and went back into the lead by half a second.
By the service break, Loeb had ground out a 2.9s lead over Gronholm. "The battle is incredible and there's no room for me to pull back," said Loeb at the service area. Gronholm's teammate, Mikko Hirvonen - who, by his own admission lost the rally on day one due to a poor tyre choice - finished third, just over a minute behind the leaders, but safely in front of Jari-Matti Latvala and Australian Chris Atkinson. Atkinson won that duel.
Daniel Sordo had the same special stage time as Hirvonen and ended the rally in sixth.
Petter Solberg completed the last stage of the day as third fastest, finishing seventh overall. "The car was going much better than on Saturday," said Solberg. "But it was all a bit too late."
Taking the last of the points was Mitsubishi's Urmo Aava, eighth overall.
Richard Mason was the first New Zealander home, to claim the Woolf Whittikers trophy. The Subaru driver, and current New Zealand champion, overtook Sam Murray during yesterday's stage. Mason finished third in the production world championships behind Irishman Niall McShea and former production world champion Toshihiro Arai.
Murray holds a 20-point lead over Hayden Paddon in the New Zealand Rally championship after the fifth round, held over the first two days of Rally New Zealand.
Defending champion Mason is now third, a further five points back. Subaru driver Murray finished the round second, behind Alister McRae, but jumped to the series lead when Paddon dropped out with a broken gearbox, then Mason got stuck in second gear during the last stage of the day.
