Leg 2: Gronholm looks unstoppable

The Finn, who set five of the day's six fastest stage times, acknowledged that it had been a good day.

"Now I feel confident. Unless we have a technical problem we can win this rally. If you look at Australia and Rally GB and the times we did on these gravel rallies, I knew we could do it," he said.

Carlos Sainz finished the leg third overall, almost two and a half minutes behind Gronholm and will have a difficult job to catch the 206s on Sunday. The Spaniard was pushed up to third after his team-mate Colin McRae hit a rock on SS8. McRae was forced to change the wheel in the stage which cost him valuable time and the 1995 world champion ended the day 11th overall.

Tomorrow the major battle will be for fourth place between Freddy Loix and Richard Burns. Loix in his Hyundai currently holds the position but Peugeot's new boy has climbed back up the leaderboard today and is only half a second behind him.

Burns however wants to go one better and make the event a Peugeot 1-2-3. "We can push again tomorrow for third, which would be a great result," he said.

Kenneth Eriksson is the only remaining Skoda in the top 10 after team-mate Toni Gardemeister retired on SS11 after a collision with a snowbank forced his retirement. He was running 10th overall at the time. It was also disaster for the Subaru team, first Tommi Makinen retired on leg one and then Petter Solberg retired today, the Impreza's engine stopping on SS6.

Privateer Janne Tuohimo rounded off the day in seventh in his Focus RS WRC, while Alister McRae enjoyed a comfortable day in the Mitsubishi to finish the leg eighth overall, having set the eighth fastest stage time on the final stage.

Completing the top ten is the Hyundai of Juha Kankkunen in ninth and Sebastian Lindholm in the privateer Peugeot in tenth.

Thomas Radstrom has set consistent top five stage times today, but a two minute penalty he incurred this morning after leaving service late to fix a broken turbo leaves him 20th overall. Delecour ended the day 19th overall, still trying to recover from a terrible first leg when got stuck in a snowbank.

The teams will face five stages tomorrow totalling almost 130km ahead of the finish in Karlstad.