[7] The rally was won by Sébastien Loeb, the seventy-seventh of his career and his seventh victory on the Rallye Monte Carlo.

Martial, consisting of a series of long technical sections through a forest that opens up onto narrow roads that are exposed to the prevailing weather conditions.

St. Nazaire le Desert—La Motte Chalancon was last used in 2009 as a round of the Intercontinental Rally Challenge when it was run in the opposite direction to the planned route for 2012, which follows narrow, twisty roads across a mountain ridge, passing through several small villages as it reaches a mountain pass over a kilometre above sea level.

This formed the longest overall day of competition, with the stages in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region, close to the Italian border.

[19] The second stage, Lantosque—Lucéram, was also run twice across relatively flat terrain before climbing over a mountain ridge and descending to the commune of Lucéram.

With the cars running in the order that they finished the 2012 season, Sébastien Loeb was the first driver through the stages, and on his arrival at the end of Le Moulinon—Antraigues it was observed that the dry conditions had torn the studs free of his front tyres.

Following the service park in Valence, the cars returned to Le Moulinon—Antraigues, where Loeb continued to build on his lead, finishing the stage twelve seconds faster than Latvala, who after some initial teething problems had gained confidence in the Polo R. Sordo was once again third, whilst Hirvonen took fourth back from Hänninen.

The opening leg of the rally was also marked by technical troubles in the timing logs,[23] with errors in the system falsely recording Loeb as stopping on the first stage.

The problem was rectified when Citroën shut off the Global Positioning System tracking devices installed in the cars driven by Loeb and Dani Sordo,[24] but it was some time before organisers were able to confirm the results at the end of the day.

Bonnet, ahead of Mads Østberg and Juho Hänninen to give Ford the three fastest times of the stage.

Latvala finished third to close within twenty seconds of Hirvonen in fifth overall, whilst Julien Maurin in a privately entered Ford Fiesta RS WRC was forced out when he had an accident on the stage.

Sébastien Loeb won his eighth stage of the rally as the cars resumed the third leg, finishing St. Jean-en-Royans—La Cime du Mas a second and a half faster than Sébastien Ogier, while Evgeny Novikov finished the stage fourth to take a further seven seconds from Dani Sordo.

Sordo was fourth, less than two seconds behind the Russian, while Jari-Matti Latvala finally felt comfortable with his Polo R WRC, setting the second-fastest time on Sisteron—Thoard and moving up into fifth place overall.

Mikko Hirvonen slipped further down the order to sixth place, expressing dissatisfaction with his car, having developed a chronic understeer problem.

The final leg of the rally quickly claimed three scalps during the first pass of the famous Col de Turini stage.

Evgeny Novikov crashed halfway through the stage, and despite his efforts to continue, the damage was terminal; Jari-Matti Latvala slid off the road, and was unable to rejoin the route, forcing him out; and Juho Hänninen developed a mechanical problem that brought his Ford Fiesta RS WRC to a halt.

Bryan Bouffier was the surprise winner of the stage ahead of Mads Østberg in the sole surviving Fiesta and Sébastien Ogier.

Further down the order, Michał Kościuszko passed WRC-2 entrant Armin Kremer to move up into the points-scoring positions in tenth, which the Polish driver would hold onto for the remainder of the rally.

Martin Prokop took advantage of the retirements early in the day to secure seventh, ahead of Sepp Wiegand in the first of the WRC-2 entries.

Sepp Wiegand, also driving a Škoda Fabia S2000, inherited the lead and held a one-minute advantage over Armin Kremer by the end of the first day.

A late charge from Armin Kremer on the final leg of the rally was not enough to overthrow Wiegand, who won the category and was classified eighth overall.

[26] Of the two remaining entries, Renaud Poutot in a Citroën DS3 built to R3T regulations established a one-minute lead over Sébastien Chardonnet in another DS3 during the first day.

Poutot ended the first day in twentieth position, with Chardonnet in twenty-second and the two separated by Lotos Team WRC driver Michał Kościuszko.