The World Rally Championship reaches the midway point of the season this weekend with Sebastien Loeb hot favourite to make it six out of six for 2009 in bone dry conditions in Sardinia.

Citroen's defending champion has won the Rally of Italy in three of the past four years and signalled his intentions by emerging quickest in Thursday's practice.

But the Frenchman was in cautious mood on the eve of battle, warning that setting out first for Friday's opening six stages could seriously limit his speed.

"The stages were very slippery on the recce. It was very dry and I think it will be dry all weekend, so that?s going to makes road cleaning very important," he told wrc.com.

"You could see the difference in the times today (Thursday)," he added.

"I was 15 seconds faster on my third pass compared to my first. That shows how much you have to clean the roads. I think that might be the key to this rally."

Loeb told the sport's official website that he expected to lose time to his rivals on the opening day, but wasn?t sure whether tactics would come into play before Saturday.

"It depends, because it?s possible I?ll lose nearly one minute on Friday. And if I was leading by that amount after the first day I?d find it very hard to give it up."

Reflecting on Thursday's test he added: "It was okay but not so representative of the rally. There were a lot of uphill hairpins, so it was a bit different to the actual stages. I just tried to see if everything was going well on the car and if the set-up looked okay. It was alright, so I had no problems."

Loeb leads the drivers' standings on 50 points with his Citroen teammate Daniel Sordo placed second on 31 and Ford Focus driver and former champion Mikko Hirvonen one point adrift in third.

Hirvonen and his Ford team have left no stone unturned in their bid to stop the Loeb machine, turning up in Sardinia early for a full week of testing as they seek their first win since Japan last year.