Loeb and Ogier in ultra-tight battle

Ogier had backed off last night to put Loeb into the lead and ensure his Citroen team-mate ran first on the road this morning.

But Ogier was only 2.3s quicker than Loeb on today's first stage Aghii Theodori, putting him into a tiny 0.1s lead. And Loeb then fought back on New Pissia, where he went 0.2s quicker than Ogier to retake the lead by a single tenth.

Erstwhile leader Petter Solberg is now falling back. The Solberg Citroen lost third to Ford's Mikko Hirvonen on SS14 and is now 14.4s adrift as Hirvonen pushes to gain on the works Citroens, which he trails by 14s.

Both stage wins this morning were taken by Jari-Matti Latvala in the other Ford, bringing him back up to ninth as he recovers from the massive delays caused by his transmission and turbo problems on Friday and Saturday.

Leading positions after SS15:

Pos  Driver              Team/Car           Time/Gap
 1.  Sebastien Loeb      Citroen          3h41m41.6s
 2.  Sebastien Ogier     Citroen              + 0.1s
 3.  Mikko Hirvonen      Ford                + 14.7s
 4.  Petter Solberg      Solberg Citroen     + 29.1s
 5.  Henning Solberg     Stobart Ford      + 4m44.3s
 6.  Matthew Wilson      Stobart Ford      + 6m05.5s
 7.  Kimi Raikkonen      Ice 1 Citroen     + 7m37.4s
 8.  Juho Hanninen       Red Bull Skoda   + 10m00.4s
 9.  Jari-Matti Latvala  Ford             + 13m06.9s
10.  Dennis Kuipers      FERM Ford        + 13m37.6s