Burns and McRae star in Sweden

frightened by the reputation of the Swedish Rally. No non-Scandinaviandriver has ever won this round of the championship but during the day the
Brits have been upping the pace as their confidence levels have grown.

Not to be outdone is Alister McRae, driving the new Hyundai Accent for the
first time, and swapping times with the more established SEATs. It's been a
good benchmark test for the new car and augurs well for the future.

Up at the front however it is Marcus Gronholm who leads the rally after six
of today's eight stages with privateer Thomas Radstrom second and snapping
at the Peugeot's heels. World Champion Tommi Makinen is third but with Burns
just a second off his tail.

At the start of the year there were suggestions that McRae and his new team
mate Carlos Sainz wouldn't be getting on but there was a nice moment of
team friendship at the end of SS3.

Sainz's co-driver Luis Moya forgot to collect his time card and by the time he realised his error the Ford was on
a narrow road with no way of turning back to collect the card. Sainz
radioed back to McRae and persuaded his own co-driver, Nicky Grist, to
retrieve the card. Dinner will be on Mr Moya tonight, it seems...

Overall positions after stage six:

R Burns 6m52.7s

C McRae 6m52.7s

T Radstrom 6m53.0s

T Makinen 6m55.0s

J Kankkunen 6m55.9s

C Sainz 6m57.0s

F Delecour 6m58.2s

K Eriksson 6m59.9s

T Gardemeister 7m01.3s