Gronholm shrugs off tyre error

Gronholm and Ford teammate Mikko Hirvonen have dominated the entire event, running one-two throughout and establishing a two-minute advantage over the rest of the field by the end of leg two.

This was achieved despite the team being caught out by the arrival of the rain on this morning's first loop.

"The weather changed hugely after we made our tyre choice so a softer compound would have been better," said Gronholm.

"We weren't under severe pressure and not having to drive flat out, so it wasn't a big problem but I have never seen mud like that here.

"This afternoon I had a few troubles with my windscreen wipers, which I had to keep switching on and off to get them to work."

Hirvonen had visibility problems of a slightly different kind.

"There was so much rain that we had a lot of water coming in through the roof," he said. "I couldn't see properly for the final 10km of the last stage because the windscreen was misted."

The final leg of the Rally NZ is unusually long for a modern rally, with six stages scheduled for Sunday morning, so Gronholm is not taking his win for granted yet.

"I'm thinking about the finish and getting there without doing anything stupid but the Whaanga Coast stage is used twice tomorrow and that's long and difficult," he said.

Ford only have to outscore the Kronos Citroen team by three points to clinch the manufacturers' title in New Zealand. Kronos duo Dani Sordo and Xevi Pons currently run fourth and fifth.