Gronholm sets up final showdown

The leaders began the final day 25 seconds apart, with Gronholm planning to mount an early charge and see if he could provoke Loeb into making a mistake.

The mission began well, with Gronholm going fastest through Rera Kumay and taking 4.5 seconds out of Loeb's lead. Had he kept up that rate of progress, a thrilling showdown might have been in prospect, but Gronholm was not optimistic.

"I think it's difficult - he will wake up now!" Gronholm joked.

Contrary to Gronholm's assumption, Loeb hadn't been taking it easy and confessed to a rather scrappy performance in the stage.

"I tried too hard and lost some time," Loeb admitted. "I knew that 25 seconds (lead) on a day like today was not enough so I had to push very hard."

He kept Gronholm at bay in SS23, winning the stage by just 0.1 seconds from the Ford driver. But then Gronholm took another 5.5 seconds out of Loeb in Penke 1, closing to within 15.7 seconds.

"It was (a) tricky (stage), very tricky, so I didn't want to take too much risk," said Loeb. "I lost some time for sure. Now we have two stages to go on the second loop... it will be close. It's okay for the moment."

Gronholm conceded that he needed to be catching Loeb faster to stand a chance of snatching the win.

"It doesn't help, I think," he said. "I can't push any more (than I am)."

Mikko Hirvonen, Chris Atkinson and Manfred Stohl have held position in third to fifth places this morning, with Stohl falling away from Atkinson after the OMV Peugeot lost fourth gear in SS23. Stohl completed the loop and will receive a new gearbox at the lunchtime service.

As expected, Petter Solberg took sixth from Dani Sordo in SS22, but encountered more brake problems during the stage. He made an unsuccessful attempt to rectify the issue on the subsequent road section, and then struggled badly in SS23 and SS24, losing nearly four minutes and tumbling to eighth, behind Toshi Arai.

"I feel so sorry for all the mechanics, they're all working so bloody hard," said Solberg after SS24. "It's happening all the time and it's so frustrating.

"It's very hard psychologically, it's just incredible. I can't express it."

Luis Perez-Companc spent nearly five minutes off the road in Rera Kumay, but with so few WR cars in the rally, he only dropped from ninth to 10th, behind Gareth MacHale.

Matthew Wilson has now rejoined the rally in the second Stobart Ford after his turbo failure and ditch visit on Saturday morning. The penalties for missing much of leg two left Wilson 58th when he resumed, 53 minutes from the lead, so he is participating in leg three purely to gain experience of the Japanese stages.

Leading positions after SS24:

Pos  Driver         Make           Time
 1.  Loeb           Citroen  2h 57:24.0
 2.  Gronholm       Ford         + 15.7
 3.  Hirvonen       Ford       + 2:12.5
 4.  Atkinson       Subaru     + 5:11.8
 5.  Stohl          Peugeot    + 6:01.5
 6.  Sordo          Citroen    + 6:43.3
 7.  Arai           Subaru     + 7:51.4
 8.  P Solberg      Subaru    + 10:32.2
 9.  MacHale        Ford      + 11:32.4
10.  Perez-Companc  Ford      + 14:53.2