Day 3 am: Seb hangs on in the rain

It's been up and down for almost everyone, but none more than Colin McRae. The Scot blasted to fastest times on the first two stages of the day in the Citroen and moved up from fourth to third place, but then he lost a load of time, and that third place with a spin on SS19.

Day two star Markko Martin lost out big time. He'd surrendered third to McRae through an insufficently aggressive approach to SS17, but was going well on SS18 until the centre diff broke, leaving him with rear-wheel drive only. He, sick co-driver Michael Park and the Focus are now 55.1sec off the lead in fifth place.

Marcus Gronholm made a mistake in the first stage of the day, lost time, damaged two wheels and put the tracking out, but then lucked in - up to a point - on the final stage of the morning when he encountered a little less rain than Loeb and clawed closer again. The gap going into the final group of three stages was just 9.4sec.

Richard Burns was the morning's big winner. He moved up from fifth to third place and he's more or less in touch with the top two again - 10 seconds behind Gronholm and 19.4sec behind Loeb.

Loeb's the favourite to win, but if anyone makes a successful tyre gamble it could all turn on its head again.