Gronholm spin hands lead to Loeb

Gronholm began leg two concerned that his 10.5 second advantage over Loeb was not ample enough. He stretched the lead to 13.1 seconds by winning the Emina and Rikubetsu 3 stages, but Loeb responded in Niueo 1 - where he beat Gronholm by 6.8 seconds.

Suddenly back under pressure, Gronholm then lost 20 seconds and the rally lead with his error in Sipirkakim 1.

"I just had a spin and then I had to reverse and turn the car," Gronholm explained. "It has not been so good this morning for me, I don't know why."

He then lost a further 10 seconds to Loeb with another mistake in Menan, and heads for the lunchtime service 27.9 seconds in arrears.

Loeb remains cautious about his chances despite this morning's progress.

"Nothing is finished," he said. "The fight will continue, I think. I'm sure I will have to push very hard. I was pushing Marcus, but now he will push me."

Mikko Hirvonen was not close enough to take advantage of his teammate's spin, and his main challenge in the second half of the rally will be to stave off the tedium as he heads for what should be an uncontested third place, incidents permitting.

Having lost fifth to Dani Sordo in Friday afternoon's superspecials, Chris Atkinson started today in determined fashion.

He swiftly repassed the Kronos Citroen and then demolished the 35 second gap to fourth-placed Manfred Stohl's OMV Peugeot. The Subaru moved up to fourth in SS15, despite being a little battered after some excursions in the previous stage.

"I just fell into a ditch on the outside of a corner, bounced back onto the road but lost a few seconds and our spoiler," said Atkinson. "It's good we made up the time."

Stohl had no intention of emulating Atkinson's flat-out attack.

"He's pushing like hell," said Stohl. "I think he was two or three times off the road and I think he's quite lucky to still be in the race. We won't take the same risks as he's taking right now."

Atkinson's progress was the only positive aspect of Subaru's morning, as team leader Petter Solberg continued to struggle. The Norweigan was evasive when quizzed about the nature of his problems and ended the morning eighth after being repassed by teammate Toshi Arai in SS15.

The local star had earlier lost ground with a spin in SS11 and was subsequently unhappy with his Subaru's handling, but remains on course for points.

Matthew Wilson suffered a disastrous morning - losing several minutes with a turbo problem and then going off in SS14, reportedly while trying to get out of Atkinson's way. His teammate Luis Perez-Companc has therefore been elevated to ninth, ahead of Gareth MacHale.

Leading positions after SS15:

Pos  Driver         Make           Time
 1.  Loeb           Citroen  1h 53:49.4
 2.  Gronholm       Ford         + 27.9
 3.  Hirvonen       Ford       + 1:15.6
 4.  Atkinson       Subaru     + 3:40.1
 5.  Stohl          Peugeot    + 3:44.5
 6.  Sordo          Citroen    + 4:26.3
 7.  Arai           Subaru     + 5:14.7
 8.  P Solberg      Subaru     + 5:19.6
 9.  Perez-Companc  Ford       + 6:45.5
10.  MacHale        Ford       + 7:31.1