Citroen pleased with pace in Sweden

Sebastien Loeb finished second to Marcus Gronholm, but Frequelin was pleased to see the world champion matching the pace of the Ford driver for the majority of the event.

"Sebastien showed that we are capable of taking the fight to Marcus on his favourite hunting ground," said Frequelin. "The weekend was very positive and showed that the C4 is competitive on snow.

"Despite running first on the road, Sebastien was level with Marcus on day one and the following day saw him close the gap by six tenths of a second after 44km of stages."

Loeb lost touch with Gronholm on the second day, when he was on the wrong tyres for two stages, but Frequelin admitted that it was a deliberate attempt to do something different to Gronholm.

"At one point we made a deliberately different tyre choice to our rival in a bid to break away but the move had the opposite effect," he said.

Loeb conceded defeat once he had fallen more than half a minute behind Gronholm, but he was still pleased with the weekend.

"We were wide of the mark with one of our tyre choices but that's all part of the game," said Loeb. "Sometimes we have won rallies that way in the past.

"The C4 was competitive and that's the main thing. That is a good indication that the car is well sorted and that's encouraging for the rest of the season."