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Solberg sees huge lead vanish

Petter Solberg continues to lead the Acropolis Rally, but his advantage has been reduced from nearly a minute to just 5.4 seconds in the space of three stages

The Norweigan had hoped that charging into a big lead on Friday would give him enough of a cushion to hang on when running first on the dusty roads today.

But the three cars behind were able to tear into Solberg's cushion this morning, with Citroen's Sebastien Ogier winning all three stages to come from fourth - 57s down on Solberg - to second, just 5.4s adrift. Solberg lost 10s overshooting a junction on SS8, but otherwise his lack of pace was purely down to stage conditions.

Ogier's team-mate Sebastien Loeb and Ford's Mikko Hirvonen have also closed in, and are now 15s and 23.8s off the lead respectively.

Despite brake issues this morning, Henning Solberg remains fifth ahead of his Stobart Ford team-mate Matthew Wilson.

Kimi Raikkonen has moved up to seventh after Ott Tanak rolled out of the S2000 lead and seventh overall, and Jari-Matti Latvala's Ford developed a turbo problem that left him limping through the stages. The Finn is now 13 minutes away from the lead.

Leading positions after SS9:

Pos  Driver           Team/Car           Time/Gap
 1.  Petter Solberg   Solberg Citroen  2h24m09.4s
 2.  Sebastien Ogier  Citroen              + 5.4s
 3.  Sebastien Loeb   Citroen             + 15.0s
 4.  Mikko Hirvonen   Ford                + 23.8s
 5.  Henning Solberg  Stobart Ford      + 2m44.7s
 6.  Matthew Wilson   Stobart Ford      + 3m26.0s
 7.  Kimi Raikkonen   Ice 1 Citroen     + 4m57.2s
 8.  Juho Hanninen    Red Bull Skoda    + 5m35.5s
 9.  Bernardo Sousa   Quinta Ford       + 7m57.6s
10.  Dennis Kuipers   FERM Ford         + 8m44.8s

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