Petter Solberg followed up his fastest time on the Rally Mexico qualifying stage with a win on the short Guanajuato street stage that opened the event on Thursday evening. The Ford driver was 0.4sec quicker than second-placed Sebastien Loeb's Citroen.

The whole top 10 was within 1.9sec over the one-kilometer stage, with Mads Ostberg putting his Adapta Ford third, just ahead of Mikko Hirvonen in the second works Citroen, Jari-Matti Latvala's Ford and Ott Tanak's M-Sport Ford.

Chris Atkinson began his World Rally Championship comeback for Monster Ford with seventh place.

The full-length stages commence on Friday morning.

Leading positions after SS1:

Pos  Driver              Team/Car        Time/Gap
 1.  Petter Solberg      Ford               53.7s
 2.  Sebastien Loeb      Citroen           + 0.4s
 3.  Mads Ostberg        Adapta Ford       + 0.6s
 4.  Mikko Hirvonen      Citroen           + 0.8s
 5.  Jari-Matti Latvala  Ford              + 1.0s
 6.  Ott Tanak           M-Sport Ford      + 1.0s
 7.  Chris Atkinson      Monster Ford      + 1.5s
 8.  Armindo Araujo      Portugal Mini     + 1.7s
 9.  Thierry Neuville    Citroen Junior    + 1.9s
10.  Nasser Al-Attiyah   Qatar Citroen     + 1.9s