Hirvonen closing in on maiden win

Petter Solberg won the opening stage of the day, but Hirvonen won the next two and increased his lead to 37 seconds over the Subaru driver.

"It's looking good for me," said Hirvonen. "I need to be careful with only three stages to go, but I can take a breath now."

Solberg considered himself lucky to still be in the rally after he hit a rock when going through a narrow section of SS23.

"There was a big rock in the middle of the road and I couldn't avoid it," he said. "I thought my rally was over, so I'm happy to still be here."

Manfred Stohl continued to pull away from Xevi Pons to maintain third place, and the Peugeot driver admitted that he could take things easy to get to the end of the event.

"I'm still struggling for confidence on the loose gravel," he said, "but now we can reduce our speed a little to save our position."

Pons is under instruction to make sure he holds on to his fourth position to score points for Citroen in the manufacturers' championship, and also to make sure Sebastien Loeb is crowned champion.

Marcus Gronholm is up to fifth overall now and ahead of the PWRC leaders, but the Finn needs to finish third to keep the title battle alive.

"I can't do much more," said the Ford driver. "There is no panic for me now, we just have to stay on the road."

Gronholm has knocked PWRC leader Marcos Ligato down to sixth overall, but the Mitsubishi driver still has a comfortable lead in his class.

Top 10 leaderboard after SS23:

Pos  Driver     Make        Time
 1.  Hirvonen   Ford        2h 46:12.9
 2.  Solberg    Subaru      +     37.1
 3.  Stohl      Peugeot     +   3:16.2
 4.  Pons       Citroen     +   4:04.4
 5.  Gronholm   Ford        +  12:18.8
 6.  Ligato     Mitsubishi  +  13:48.2
 7.  Latvala    Subaru      +  14:52.4
 8.  Teiskonen  Subaru      +  15:04.0
 9.  Herridge   Subaru      +  15:13.7
10.  Baldacci   Mitsubishi  +  15:30.2