Hirvonen leads after dramatic day

The Ford driver stayed out of trouble during the morning, and difficult conditions in the afternoon caused far more problems for Solberg than for Hirvonen.

Marcus Gronholm was running first on the road again in his repaired Focus in the afternoon, but his position on the road turned out to be an advantage because of the dust hanging in the air throughout SS9.

Hirvonen had closed to within 1.3 seconds of Solberg after SS8, and despite losing 15 seconds to Gronholm, he was nearly half a minute faster than the angry Subaru driver.

The 2003 champion said: "The dust is getting worse and worse. We almost had to stop on the stage, it should have been cancelled for safety reasons."

Hirvonen had also struggled with the dust, but was happy to be leading.

"We had to slow down for the finish line 100 metres before it because we couldn't see it," said the rally leader. "It's been a strange day because of all that has happened, but we are leading so we can't complain."

From tomorrow the cars will start the stages three minutes apart instead of two, in an attempt to reduce the problem.

Xevi Pons is in third place, narrowly ahead of Manfred Stohl, who complained all day of an ill-handling car.

Gronholm ended the day just over 12 minutes behind Hirvonen, but needs to get up to at least third place by the finish to keep his title hopes alive and is currently more than 10 minutes adrift of a podium position.

With only four WRC cars still in contention at the front of the field, Production WRC leader Dean Herridge is fifth overall in his local event.

Henning Solberg has retired from the rally after a crash earlier today damaged his roll cage. Chris Atkinson, Matt Wilson and Luis Perez Companc will all return to action tomorrow under SupeRally rules, with Dani Sordo also expected to run.

Pos Driver     Make        Time
 1. Hirvonen   Ford        1:13:10.1
 2. Solberg    Subaru      + 26.2
 3. Pons       Citroen     + 1:24.4
 4. Stohl      Peugeot     + 1:32.6
 5. Herridge   Subaru      + 5:37.0
 6. Arai       Subaru      + 5:40.3
 7. Baldacci   Mitsubishi  + 5:53.8
 8. Teiskonen  Subaru      + 5:55.0
 9. Latvala    Subaru      + 6:00.4
10. Ligato     Mitsubishi  + 6:24.2