Day 2am Gronholm leads

Gronholm's lead is 21.8s over Citroen driver Loeb, with Martin's factory Ford Focus a further seven seconds back. The Finn's car appears to be suffering no ill effects despite completing the last two stages of yesterday with a broken clutch.

Loeb flew over SS9 to his first stage win of the day and that was enough to move him ahead of Martin. Harri Rovanpera, who overnight headed the chase for his Peugeot team-mate's lead, is suffering from transmission problems and has slipped back to fifth overall.

The man on a charge however is world champion Petter Solberg, who lost the better part of 10 minutes yesterday when his engine overheated. The Subaru driver was easily fastest on SS7 and SS8 and fourth quickest on the most recent stage, SS9.

Solberg still lies tenth overall but is rapidly closing in on the points positions and will likely have passed his brother Henning and Giles Panizzi's eighth-placed Mitsubishi before the end of the day.

Carlos Sainz has moved up to fourth in the other Citroen, another to benefit from Rovanpera's problems, while Mikko Hirvonen now leads Subaru's attack in sixth.