Leg 2 am: Gronholm leads the way

Gronholm was on a charge increasing his overnight lead to team mate Harri Rovanpera to 30 seconds. The Finn finished SS8 almost five seconds ahead of his closest rival.

For Colin McRae however, his chances of victory appear to be over. The Scot set the fastest time on the day's first 40km Gransberget II test and was lying a comfortable third overall when the Focus hit a rock on SS8, smashing the wheel. McRae and co-driver Nicki Grist were forced to stop mid-stage to change the wheel, but the cost in time pushed them down to 13th place as the teams head to day's midday service at Hagfors.

"We were exiting a corner, the car drifted but we were on the road and suddenly we heard a bang, "said McRae. "The left rear wheel had shattered and we drove about a kilometre before we found somewhere to stop and change it. I'm very disappointed, we'll see now if we can just go as hard as possible."

Four other drivers reported hitting the rock and 6th placed Jani Paasonen lost a similar amount of time to McRae and slid from sixth to 18th overall.

McRae's incident pushed team-mate Carlos Sainz up to third overall with Hyundai's Freddy Loix consolidating fourth place. Kenneth Eriksson who set the second fastest time on stage eight is currently fifth, the sole Skoda in the top 10.

Reading born Richard Burns continued to claw his way back up the leaderboard after losing time following yesterday's collision with a snowbank. Peugeot's new boy is now back in the points and sixth overall.

Alister McRae is growing more confident with the Mitsubishi and is eighth overall, with veteran Juha Kankkunen ninth in the second Hyundai. Peugeot privateer Sebastian Lindholm completes the top ten.

The teams have three remaining competitive stages totalling almost 43km before they return to parc ferme at Karlstad.