Loeb had an early battle last Friday with Marcus Gronholm for third place, while Solberg fought for the lead with Mikko Hirvonen. However, Gronholm and Hirvonen, both driving for the Ford works team, ran off the road — in the first and second legs, respectively, incurring penalties of 20 and 30 minutes each.

The incident left the battle for the lead between Solberg and Loeb. All day Saturday, the two drivers battled it out, until Solberg lost his power steering after hitting a rock on Special Stage 13, dropping 30 seconds back by the end of the second leg.

During the last leg of the Mexican Rally, Loeb, not content with lead, drove a scorching race on the two conventional stages totaling 56 km and a final super-special earning the two-time WRC champion another 12 second lead.

The win was the first for the Belgian Kronos Citroen team, although many of the team personnel followed Loeb to Kronos from the all-conquering Citroen works squad at the end of the 2005 season.

Loeb and Solberg were accompanied on the podium by third-placer Manfred Stohl. The Austrian scored his first WRC podium of 2006 in his OMV-entered Peugeot 307 WRC — and a win in the final super-special.

Daniel Sordo took fourth in the second Kronos entry, 48 seconds behind Stohl.

Behind the top four, though, the gaps got much bigger. The elder Solberg, Henning, was fifth in the second OMV Peugeot, 12:35 off the pace, and Irish privateer Gareth Machale scored a career-best sixth, 16 minutes behind Loeb, in a 2005-spec Ford Focus.

Behind Machale there were two drivers who were expected to finish much higher: Subaru’s Chris Atkinson and Ford’s Gronholm. Atkinson crashed out on Friday’s fifth stage and incurred a 15-minute penalty under the SupeRally regulations, taking him out of podium contention, but drove steadily to move from 19th after the first leg to seventh at the finish.

Gronholm had an extra five minutes to make up, and the Finn didn’t fool around. During the last leg, he was easily the second-fastest driver, behind only Loeb, and moved up to eighth place, 65 seconds behind Atkinson, to score a valuable championship point.

"An excellent race," Loeb said after the final stage. "It was enjoyable fight for seconds, and we won it. Now we have a victory under our belts, and we expect to take more going forward," he added.

Solberg, meanwhile said, "I am very happy with the result. Of course we set out to win but when that wasn’t possible we kept pushing for second. I went flat out on leg one to get a gap and it was unlucky to pick up the problem on the second day, but I tried hard to keep the time loss to a minimum."

"We showed that there is definitely more to come. It’s good to finally get some points and now I want more. (The championship fight) will be close and I’m going to give it everything," Solberg added.

Meanwhile, for Gronholm, he said: "This was the first gravel rally for me with the new Focus. We tried a number of small things. The car seems to be good, and I am happy with that, but driver mistakes are not good."

Loeb takes the championship lead with the victory, with 26 points to Gronholm’s 21, with Stohl in third at 11 points. Kronos also takes the manufacturers’ lead from Ford, 34-30, with Ford scoring only four points on the weekend. OMV is in third at 21 points, just one ahead of the Subaru works team.