Day 2am: Martin takes lead

Following Solberg's five-minute penalty for illegal outside assistance that took him out of the lead, Loeb held an 8.6sec advantage over Peugeot's Marcus Gronholm at the start of play. But the Finn hit trouble 18km into Saturday's first stage, as his 307's power steering failed - exactly the same fault that cost him dear on the opening day of the previous round in Sweden. He is now back in sixth after soldiering through the morning.

Solberg, spurred on by the frustration of his penalty, set fastest times on all three of this morning's stages in the new Subaru Impreza. The reigning World Champion was 14.4-seconds quicker than Martin over the opening test, he topped Ford's Francois Duval on the next stage by 5.1secs, and beat Martin by 8.6secs on SS7.

But SS7 was a stage too far for Loeb, having damaged his Citroen's sump at the end of the previous test. He was forced out, handing the advantage to Martin, who now leads Citroen's Carlos Sainz by 9.7secs.

Markko had previously battled his way into second place, having suffered a time consuming high-speed spin on the final stage of yesterday's first leg. He passed Sainz on the second stage of the day, while Ford team-mate Duval also shone, moving up to third at the expense of Peugeot's Harri Rovanpera. The latter lost over 15mins on the final stage before lunch due to a steering arm failure, and is effectively out of the running.

Subaru's Mikko Hirvonen is fourth, but is next in the sights of the charging Solberg. Gilles Panizzi was off the pace in his Mitsubishi Lancer, but was clinging to eighth, while team-mate Gigi Galli retired on the opening stage of the day.