Day 2: Ford in command

Subaru's Solberg lost the lead in the stewards' room yesterday evening (Friday), thanks to a five-minute penalty, but he drove like a man possessed on Saturday, winning all six stages. Despite his stunning pace, he is only fifth overall on Saturday night.

"I have to try to take more time on the other guys," said Solberg. "It is incredible what has happened today. I need points a lot so I'm going to try hard and see how it goes. It's no risk, this is the pace I plan to drive. This morning, I didn't know why I was bothering to continue on this rally. Now I realise that it wasn't such a bad idea!"

Peugeot's Gronholm dropped out of the reckoning for victory due to a power steering failure this morning, as happened in Sweden last month, but he is on Solberg's tail in sixth.

"This is not the first time that we have this problem in our car," said a grumpy Gronholm. "We have 200 people working for Peugeot Sport so I don't understand how this was possible."

The most significant moment of this action-packed day, however, was Sebastien Loeb's exit after he hit a rock on SS6, which cracked his Citroen's sump open and forced the championship leader out of the event. That left Martin in the lead, as he had overhauled Loeb's team-mate Carlos Sainz in the morning.

Francois Duval (Ford) followed suit in the afternoon to grasp second, the Belgian looking more surefooted than ever on gravel, but an excellent final Saturday stage time by Sainz gave him second once more. Behind them, Mikko Hirvonen is enjoying his most convincing outing with the works Subaru team, and holds a comfortable fourth. His biggest threat tomorrow, however, will be the pace of Solberg.

Peugeot's Harri Rovanpera was the day's other big loser. He lost over 15mins on SS7 due to a steering arm failure on his return to the works Pug fold. Finnish privateer Jussi Valimaki holds an impressive seventh in a Hyundai Accent, ahead of the battling Gilles Panizzi (Mitsubishi) and Anthony Warmbold (Ford).