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Hirvonen closes on Sweden win

Mikko Hirvonen is on the brink of victory in Rally Sweden, with Sebastien Loeb having declared he will settle for second after losing more time to the Finn this morning

The pair started day three 16 seconds apart, and Loeb was only able to trim 0.2s from Hirvonen's advantage on the Rammen stage. When the Citroen driver then had several wild moments on Varmullsasen and lost a further 7s to his Ford rival, Loeb admitted Hirvonen would now be impossible to beat.

"I tried, I was on the limit," said Loeb. "He's doing no mistakes and he's going as fast as me. I'll try to finish second now. I've done a few mistakes, had a few moments in the stage. He's too strong here."

Hirvonen said he had given it everything this morning, and had been quite ragged himself.

"We were ahead [on the splits] at halfway but then on the last downhill section especially it was really bad driving from me," he said after SS18. "It's very close - it's really, really flat-out all the way."

With three stages to go, Hirvonen holds a lead of 23.7s.

Jari-Matti Latvala (Ford) and Dani Sordo (Citroen) now seem set for third and fourth respectively, running a minute apart and both focusing on getting to the finish.

Further problems for Mads Ostberg have taken the bite out of the only other close battle in the top ten. The Norwegian had been pushing to try and reclaim seventh from Matthew Wilson (Stobart Ford) but a brake problem on Ostberg's Adapta Subaru cost him a lot of time on this loop.

"All the way from the beginning of the stage before this one, the brakes kept going," Ostberg said at the end of Varmullsesen. "It was really strange, just in the middle of the road they weren't there. It's stupid. My bad luck will never stop."

Pos  Driver              Car        Time/Gap
 1.  Mikko Hirvonen      Ford     2h39m13.0s
 2.  Sebastien Loeb      Citroen     + 23.7s
 3.  Jari-Matti Latvala  Ford      + 1m12.4s
 4.  Dani Sordo          Citroen   + 2m13.2s
 5.  Sebastien Ogier     Citroen   + 3m18.0s
 6.  Henning Solberg     Ford      + 4m27.3s
 7.  Matthew Wilson      Ford      + 6m40.0s
 8.  Mads Ostberg        Subaru    + 8m20.5s
 9.  Petter Solberg      Citroen   + 9m25.8s
10.  P-G Andersson       Skoda    + 10m18.9s

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