Galli drops out on road section

The Italian had spent the day in a spectacular battle for third with Dani Sordo, and would have started the final leg just 1.3 seconds from a podium place on his home event.

But Galli encountered overheating problems after the Peugeot 307's cooling fan failed during today's final stage. He tried to nurse the car back to service, and even stopped next to a river in a bid to get more water to put into the cooling system, but eventually came to a halt on the road section.

If the car can be recovered in time, Galli will be able to restart with only a two minute penalty tomorrow as he finished the stage before stopping. This would allow him to rejoin having only lost one place.

Sordo is now virtually assured of the final podium spot behind Sebastien Loeb and Mikko Hirvonen, and suggested that this would have been the case even if Galli had not hit trouble. According to Sordo, the battle was only as close as it was because he gave away too much time by choosing excessively hard tyres for the first loop of stages.

"That cast me quite a few seconds," Sordo told autosport.com, "so maybe it wouldn't have been so close if I'd had the right tyres this morning."