After the opening day of competition, Spaniard Dani Sordo leads the Jordan Rally, round five of the FIA World Rally Championship. The Citroën driver heads four-time World Champion and team-mate Sébastien Loeb, with Ford’s Jari-Matti Latvala claiming the final provisional podium position.

This is the first year Jordan has been included in the World Rally Championship calendar. Based from the service park on the shores of the Dead Sea, the first day took the crews over eight treacherously slippery gravel stages and, with scorching temperatures that have neared 40ºC over the past few days, conditions have been particularly gruelling for the competing crews.

Sordo took the lead from the outset, winning all but one of the first loop of four stages to pull out a 13.8 second advantage over Latvala. This morning he benefited from starting sixth on the road and, as a consequence, then lost time to his rivals this afternoon when the roads were cleaner for the second run of the same stages. He overnights with a 1.1 second lead over Loeb, who had a better feeling with the car this afternoon after set-up changes during the mid-day service.

Latvala has had a relatively trouble-free day, his only problem being high tyre wear and a puncture in the final stage. His team-mate Mikko Hirvonen damaged the rear suspension on the second stage, but is still only 13.4 seconds adrift of the lead. Chris Atkinson leads Subaru’s challenge in fifth position, after team-mate Petter Solberg was forced to retire with broken suspension having hit a rock. Urmo Aava has put in a good performance in his Citroën C4, the Estonian sixth at the end of the day.

Leading retirements of the day also include Gigi Galli (Ford), who broke the rear differential cooler, and Suzuki drivers Toni Gardemeister and Per-Gunnar Andersson. Gardemeister had a suspected engine problem, while Andersson went off the road this morning.

Jordan Rally - Results after Day 1

1	Dani Sordo/Marc Marti	Citroën C4 WRC	1 hr 16 min 53.7sec
2	Sébastien Loeb/Daniel Elena	Citroën C4 WRC	1 hr 16 min 54.8sec
3	Jari-Matti Latvala/Miikka Anttila	Ford Focus RS WRC	1 hr 17 min 02.2sec
4	Mikko Hirvonen/Jarmo Lehtinen	Ford Focus RS WRC	1 hr 17 min 07.1sec
5	Chris Atkinson/Stéphane Prévot	Subaru Impreza WRC	1 hr 18 min 01.7sec
6	Urmo Aava/Kuldar Sikk	Citroën C4 WRC	1 hr 18 min 53.0sec
7	Matthew Wilson/Scott Martin	Ford Focus RS WRC	1 hr 19 min 46.4sec
8	Henning Solberg/Cato Menkerud	Ford Focus RS WRC	1 hr 20 min 16.0sec

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