Hirvonen extends lead in Norway

The Ford driver won SS3, which was a repeat of the first stage of the rally that he also won this morning.

Sebastien Loeb also took his second stage win of the day, but the world champion is nearly half a minute adrift of the leader.

Hirvonen leads Gronholm by 11 seconds, and he has promised to keep pushing after starting the rally so well.

"Eleven seconds to Marcus is nothing," he said. "I need to keep pushing, we are battling each other at the moment."

Hirvonen added that he made a decision prior to the rally to push harder this weekend, on stages that are new to everybody.

"We had a good result in Sweden but I wasn't completely happy," he said. "So I decided that on new stages for everyone I would push a bit harder."

Loeb blamed his position on the road for his lack of pace on some stages so far, and he is expecting more of the same in the afternoon's stages.

"The position on the road is not good for me," he said, "but we still have another four where I am first, so we have a long way to go to catch up."

Gigi Galli leapt up to fourth place during the second loop of stages, but he is only narrowly ahead of Henning Solberg and Toni Gardemeister, who lost time when they went off in SS3.

Petter Solberg was surprisingly upbeat despite being 47 seconds behind the leader in seventh place on his home rally.

"We are having a good morning," he said. "We don't have any problems, and we are going very steady. We need the points, and I want to finish my home rally."

Solberg is comfortably ahead of Manfred Stohl in eighth place, after the Austrian moved ahead of a frustrated Chris Atkinson.

The Australian remains in ninth place though, as Jari-Matti Latvala left the first service period late this morning and he picked up a one-minute penalty, which dropped him from fourth to 12th.

Atkinson could also fall behind Daniel Carlsson soon, as the Swede is just five seconds behind him in 10th place.

Pos  Driver        Make         Time
 1.  Hirvonen 	   Ford        48:10.1
 2.  Gronholm 	   Ford        +  11.0
 3.  Loeb 	   Citroen     +  26.7
 4.  Galli 	   Citroen     +  41.3
 5.  Solberg 	   Ford        +  42.0
 6.  Gardemeister  Mitsubishiu +  46.3
 7.  Solberg 	   Subaru      +  47.6
 8.  Stohl         Citroen     +  1:25.0
 9.  Atkinson 	   Subaru      +  1:26.7
10.  Carlsson 	   Citroen     +  1:31.0