Leg 2am: Panizzi again

The 206 driver completed the 21.8km stage in a time of 13m19.9s, over three seconds quicker than his nearest rival, Sebastien Loeb in the Citroen Xsara. Once again French cars dominated the stage, with Citroen and Peugeot filling the first four places. Richards Burns was third, and now lies over 30s behind Panizzi in the overall standings. Philippe Bugalski was fourth fastest.

Petter Solberg fulfilled his increasingly familiar role of fastest Pirelli runner by coming in fifth. With the top 15 taking to the stage in reverse order it was Mitsubishi's Alister McRae that gave the fans their first sight of a rally car today. The Scot's opening time of 13m46.2s set the benchmark, but he was soon bumped down the order, with Freddy Loix going a full 10 seconds quicker in his Hyundai Accent.

'Fast' Freddy's run kept at the head of the times until Solberg made his mark, and following the retirement of Tommi Makinen the Belgian is now up to 12th. Toni Gardemeister also did a great job to set the eighth best time in his Skoda.

It was a nightmare stage for Markko Martin who was the slowest of the top 15 after a problem with his steering - his Focus kept pulling to the left - cost him almost half a minute to the front runners.

The action stops for lunch now and is due to resume at 14.34 local time. SS10 is a rerun of Call de Bracons (SS7), which was cancelled this morning. The volume of fans' cars parked by the side of the road are apparently still causing problems, but hopefully the organisers will have them removed, allowing the WRC cars to run.