The weather gamble worked out in Citroen’s favour by the end of a tense opening morning of Brother Rally New Zealand, with Mikko Hirvonen holding a narrow lead over his team-mate Sebastien Loeb after stage four.

Citroen had been adamant rain would arrive on day one so sent its cars out early in the running order – a decision that would have consigned them to a day of cleaning loose gravel for those behind had the weather been dry.

In the event, although Ford’s Jari-Matti Latvala was quickest on stage one, conditions turned more in Citroen’s favour thereafter.

Hirvonen has led since stage two, but Loeb has been the man to watch of late. Two consecutive stage wins for the world champion saw him take nearly eight seconds out of Hirvonen’s lead, with the gap now down to 3.9s. As he did so, Latvala was dropping back, falling 16s off the lead by the end of the day.

The rest of the field is already a long way behind. M-Sport Ford duo Evgeny Novikov and Ott Tanak are closely matched in fourth and fifth, but both had been trailing Qatar Citroen’s Thierry Neuville until the Belgian had a spin on stage three.

Latvala is the only factory Ford in the hunt for victory, as a decision to take hard tyres left Petter Solberg struggling badly for pace all morning. Down in seventh place, he is already a minute and a half from the front. Dani Sordo – back with the Prodrive WRC Team – also went for hard rubber and had his difficulties compounded by some gearbox oddities, leaving him eighth ahead of Armindo Araujo’s Portugal Mini.