Gronholm wins in Sweden

The Ford driver cruised to victory once Sebastien Loeb conceded defeat on Saturday afternoon, but the Frenchman still leads the world championship by two points.

"It's been a good weekend," said Gronholm. "We've had no problems with the car, everything has been perfect."

Loeb admitted that he expected it to be tough to beat Gronholm in this event, and he was pleased with the performance of the new Citroen C4 in only its second rally.

"To finish second behind Marcus here is a good result," said Loeb. "I was happy to see the car had the pace to fight with him, and it looks like we will have a good battle all year."

Mikko Hirvonen completed a good weekend for Ford with third place, while Henning Solberg was delighted with fourth place in just his second rally in the Ford Focus.

"I am so happy," said the Norwegian. "This is almost better than the podium finish I had in Turkey, this is my best performance."

Daniel Carlsson was unable to repeat his third place finish from last year, but the Swede was happy with a top five finish.

"This is only my third rally in the past year," said Carlsson. "These guys are all so good that I knew it would be very tough, but I'm delighted."

Toni Gardemeister recovered to sixth place after driveshaft problems nearly dropped him out of the points on Saturday, while Manfred Stohl put in a solid performance to finish seventh.

Chris Atkinson's cautious approach to the weekend was working well until SS18, when the Subaru driver went off and he dropped from fifth to eighth place, just ahead of Mads Ostberg and Jan Kopecky.

Top 10 leaderboard:

Pos  Driver         Make         Time
 1.  Gronholm       Ford         3:08:40.7
 2.  Loeb           Citroen      +    53.8
 3.  Hirvonen       Ford         +  1:41.5
 4.  Solberg        Ford         +  2:09.8
 5.  Carlsson       Citroen      +  3:37.8
 6.  Gardemeister   Mitsubishi   +  3:54.2
 7.  Stohl          Citroen      +  5:12.5
 8.  Atkinson       Subaru       +  6:14.7
 9.  Ostberg        Subaru       +  7:47.0
10.  Kopecky        Skoda        +  7:52.5