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Sebastien Loeb was once again the winningest driver of the season, racking up one more win than in 2009. In the challenger department both Jari-Matti Latvala and season's revelation Sebastien Ogier scored two wins while Mikko Hirvonen managed only one win.
Loeb was on podium on all rallies except one whereas last year's podium master Hirvonen had a terrible season and managed only two, worst score of all podium finishers. Ahead of youngsters Latvala and Ogier, veteran Petter Solberg was rejuvenated and scored impressive eight podium finishes.
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In points scoring department the new "points for top-10" rule meant that scoring was easier than previously. Thus, Loeb had 100% scoring record and Latvala, Ogier and Petter Solberg all managed to score in all but one of the season's rallies.
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In proportion, Loeb won as many of the stages as he had in 2009. But last year's number two in terms of stage wins, Mikko Hirvonen, traded places with Petter Solberg who was second in 2010 and had been sixth in 2009. Overall, Mikko's bad season and both Petter's and Ogier's rise meant that Ford drivers managed to win only one out of five stages during the season.
Same abysmal distinction is evident in rally leaders statistics with Ford maintaining rally lead only in one out of five stages. Interestingly enough, Ogier was more often in the lead than for example Petter Solberg, who outscored young Frenchman in number of podium and stage wins.
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Finland was the fastest rally but with absence of Cyprus, the slowest rally of the season was Jordan. Although rally lengths were meant to increase with new route rules but in fact the spread increased as two shortest rallies of the season were shorter than in 2009 and two longest rallies were longer than in 2010. Number of entrants was slightly up, the most popular of the rallies almost reaching 100 entries.
Stage lengths also crept up a bit with three rallies having stages over 40 kilometers long. In top ten fastest stages there were one stage from Turkey and one from Jordan, Finland taking up the rest. Slowest and shortest stages were almost exclusively spectator super specials.
Ford overtook Mitsubishi as the most popular rally car while Finland and United Kingdom remained the most numerous nationalities for entrants.
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Sebastien Loeb was the statistics king of the season, once again.
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