Loeb leads as Fords mount a charge

With the cars now taking to the stages in the order that they completed day one, Loeb and his teammate Dani Sordo were running first and second on the road this morning.

They had hoped that overnight rain would minimise the grip problems associated with leading the way on the loose, dusty stage surfaces, but Loeb felt the rain had not been sufficient to help them.

"I had a clean drive, but it's very slippery," Loeb said after the morning's first stage. "It's not wet enough. The start was okay, but then it started to be very slippery and I had to clean a lot. What can I do? We knew if it was dry we would lose a lot of time to the Fords."

The world champion coped better than Sordo, though, as the Spaniard was reeled in by the charging Mikko Hirvonen and Jari-Matti Latvala and fell from second to fourth in SS9.

"I don't have a lot of confidence in the car and I lost a lot of time," Sordo said. "We'll change something on the car and see what happens."

The two Fords have benefited from their road position to go first and second fastest through all three stages this morning, with Latvala taking a hat-trick of stage wins.

While Hirvonen has moved up from fourth to second, Latvala - who led the rally early on Friday before losing a minute and a half to a puncture - has leapt from seventh to third.

"It's so different to yesterday now the road is a little bit easier for us," Hirvonen said. "Jari-Matti is flying behind, so it's going to be a big fight."

Subaru have lost ground this morning. Petter Solberg began the day in third place but immediately dropped four places with a slow time through SS7 and then tumbled to 14th when a puncture in the following stage cost him almost five minutes.

His teammate Chris Atkinson is now down to sixth behind Gigi Galli (Stobart Ford), who has also recovered superbly after his Friday puncture.

Munchi's Ford driver Henning Solberg and Urmo Aava in the semi-works Citroen are now up to seventh and eighth following Petter Solberg's delay, while Suzuki's encouragingly trouble-free weekend continues, with Toni Gardemeister and Per-Gunnar Andersson completing the top ten at the rally's halfway point.

The SX4 duo are just 0.9 seconds apart, and more than a minute clear of the battle between Conrad Rautenbach, Matthew Wilson and Federico Villagra outside the top ten.

Leading positions after SS9:

Pos  Driver        Car      Time
 1.  Loeb          Citroen  2h16:01.7
 2.  Hirvonen      Ford      +   42.0
 3.  Latvala       Ford      +   54.3
 4.  Sordo         Citroen   +   55.8
 5.  Galli         Ford      + 1:15.2
 6.  Atkinson      Subaru    + 1:55.5
 7.  H Solberg     Ford      + 3:18.3
 8.  Aava          Citroen   + 3:24.3
 9.  Gardemeister  Suzuki    + 4:11.8
10.  Andersson     Suzuki    + 4:12.7