Hirvonen stunned by 'crazy' pace

The pair are now more than a minute clear of the chasing pack, with no other driver winning a single stage yet on the Jyvaskyla-based event.

Hirvonen broke his own record for the Surkee stage this morning, despite running in worse conditions than last year and on a control tyre.

"It's crazy at the moment, just crazy," he said. "We see a corner and we're just going absolutely flat out through it. Really, the car can't go any faster. How much longer can this go on for, I don't know.

"Both of us are at the maximum. We're following Sebastien's lines through the corners and I can see he's chopping through everything, going over the rocks and through the ditches. It's incredible.

"Beating the record by ten seconds shows how we are going quicker than last year, but we're going to need even more to beat him."

Hirvonen beat Loebn on one of the morning's three stages, but lost time on the other two.

Loeb said: "It's a really tough fight, Mikko seems faster in the wide roads and me in the narrow, so it's really close."