Hirvonen ends day two on top

The Ford drivers were pulling away from Loeb before the world champion had his first off of the day in SS12, which dropped him down to 11th.

Loeb continued to push in a bid to get back into the points, but he went off again in SS13 and lost a further nine minutes.

The Citroen driver finished the day in 18th place nearly 18 minutes adrift of the lead.

"I went straight on at a junction and went into the snowbank,"said Loeb. "Then I was trying to fight to get back into the points. We had nothing to lose, and I went off again."

Gronholm is 19 seconds behind Hirvonen, and the Ford team now have to decide if they will tell the drivers to hold positions on the final day, with a gap of more than three minutes back to the next car.

Hirvonen said: "Marcus is not far away, and at the moment we are still racing so I have to keep pushing."

Hirvonen lost some time when Loeb rejoined in front of him after his second off, but Gronholm made an error during the same stage and they set almost identical times.

Petter Solberg is no longer in a safe third position, as he lost a lot of time to his brother Henning in the afternoon.

"We have had a problem for all of the stages this afternoon and I don't know what it is," said the Subaru driver.

"We lost 45 seconds in one stage, but luckily we have come through and not lost too much more. The car is all over the place."

His brother lost some of the time he was making up on him with a couple of small offs, but he finished the day just 10 seconds away from a podium finish.

Gigi Galli could have been a part of the battle for third place, but the Italian was another driver to go off the road in the treacherous conditions.

"It was my mistake," he said. "I couldn't see anywhere, I couldn't see a single thing."

Galli has dropped to seventh, while Jari-Matti Latvala and Manfred Stohl have moved ahead of him.

Xevi Pons has also moved into the points as other drivers have had problems, but the Spaniard set some strong stage times to get himself ahead of Daniel Carlsson for eighth place.

Top 10 leaderboard at the end of Leg 2:

Pos  Driver      Make         Time
 1.  Hirvonen    Ford         2:33:45.2
 2.  Gronholm    Ford         +    19.3
 3.  Solberg     Subaru       +  3:48.3
 4.  Solberg     Ford         +  3:58.2
 5.  Latvala     Ford         +  5:16.9
 6.  Stohl       Citroen      +  6:11.1
 7.  Galli       Citroen      +  6:21.7
 8.  Pons        Mitsubishi   +  8:01.8
 9.  Carlsson    Citroen      +  8:23.3
10.  Kopecky     Skoda        +  9:43.1