Sebastien Loeb extended his lead in the WRC over Ford's Mikko Hirvonen as he cruised to his fourth straight win.

Loeb now leads by 12 point after victory on the Rally of Catalunya.

The Citroen driver dominated the event from start to finish, eventually winning by a margin of 24.9 seconds from team-mate Dani Sordo after taking a cautious approach on the final day to preserve his overnight lead of 27.7 seconds.

The Frenchman only took one stage win on Sunday's six tests, having won 10 of the 12 stages over the opening two days, with Sordo and the Ford pair of Hirvonen and Francois Duval, who finished third and fourth respectively, sharing the honours on the tarmac roads.

Loeb, who is chasing his fifth consecutive world title, was delighted to have taken a significant step towards retaining his crown.

"It was really, really good for me," he said. "I cannot say it was easy - I had to push hard to make the difference with Dani and try to increase my lead.

"I tried my best all the time on the first two days to have a good lead, and I was able to slow down a bit. It's been a perfect weekend."

Sordo was also a happy man as he finished second on his home event to help Citroen extend their manufacturers' championship advantage over Ford to 17 points.

He said: "It's a good result for me and for the team. I'm very happy to do this in front of my home crowd."

Hirvonen, meanwhile, was despondent at the inability of the Focus to match the pace of the Citroens on tarmac, as he finished over a minute behind his rival.

But the Finn admitted he was glad to at least claim a podium after Duval slowed his pace on stage 17 to allow his team leader to pick up the extra point on offer for his championship cause.

It's one point extra," said Hirvonen. "It's been a very difficult weekend so I really have to thank Francois, he was a real team player. This was the best I could get."

Further back there was heartbreak for Estonia's Urmo Aava who had seemed set to take fifth place in his privateer Citroen when he broke his suspension on the penultimate stage.

"We cut one corner too deep and broke the lower arm," he said. "We changed the lower arm and started the next stage very slowly, but then something else broke and we went off again."

His misfortune saw Norway's Petter Solberg take fifth for Subaru ahead of Jari-Matti Latvala in the Stobart Ford.

Solberg's team-mate Chris Atkinson was seventh with Norway's Andreas Mikkelsen picking up the final point.