Day 2pm: Loeb untouchable

With the retirement of Peugeot's Marcus Gronholm on the first stage of the day, Loeb was gifted the lead and already enjoyed a 58.2s advantage over Peugeot's Harri Rovanpera. The Frenchman seemed quite content to relax on the remaining stages to notch up a record-equalling six wins in a season.

But then Solberg returned to the fold following his retirement on Friday. The Norwegian was keen to stress that while he was out of the rally proper, he was certainly not down, and proceeded to roll out three stage wins in the morning session on SS11, 12 and 13.

On seeing this, the competitive instinct within Loeb kicked in. The Frenchman didn't need to push it, enjoying as he did a 1m07s cushion over Rovanpera, but the Citroen ace was determined to take some of the glory away from his rival. Two stage wins followed on SS14 and 15, but then Solberg retorted with two victories of his own on SS16 and 17 before the two evening superspecials.

Loeb insists that he's been taking the day relatively easy, though, under Citroen's instructions. "I'm not stressing," he said. "I'm driving very slowly under team orders. What can I do? I just have to stay on the road. Why try now when there are no cars to compete against?"

Meanwhile, Solberg admits that he's just enjoying himself although is finding it difficult to push to the maximum. "When you're out of the fight and the pressure's off, it's difficult to push that last little bit," he said. "We're out there now to experiment with the set-up a bit and have a little fun, it's not quite a Sunday drive though."

There was little change behind Loeb during the day. Rovanpera continued to hold onto second spot behind the Frenchman outclassing Ford's Francois Duval and Subaru's Mikko Hirvonen on most of the stages and even brought a change of name to the stage results by topping the times on both of the Perth City superspecials.

Duval has maintained his third place overall, over two minutes ahead of Hirvonen in fourth while Subaru's Antony Warmbold retains his fifth position. All the top five drivers are in safe positions and barring any upset will likely remain there come the end of the rally on Sunday afternoon.

Further back local driver Dean Herridge is the top Group N driver in his Subaru and in sixth spot overall, but is closely followed by Alister McRae (seventh) and fellow local runner Chris Atkinson (eighth overall). McRae has emerged as favourite to take both the class win and the 2004 PWRC title with a 1m48s advantage over Niall McShea. Jani Paasonen remains in the rally but has dropped out of contention of the title down in 13th.