Loeb begins fightback to the front

The Frenchman began the day in eighth after restarting the event with a five-minute penalty thanks to his crash in SS6 yesterday.

Loeb's Kronos-run Citroen was not badly damaged in the accident, and he demonstrated why he has won the last three Monte Carlo Rallies by winning SS7, SS8 and SS9 this morning to move up to sixth place, just over 20 seconds behind Stephane Sarrazin's Subaru.

Although Loeb is more than three minutes behind rally leader Marcus Gronholm, second place is well within his grasp on this event, with just over a minute and 20 seconds to claw back on OMV Peugeot runner Manfred Stohl. The event still has nine of the 18 stages to run.

The ice that had characterised Leg One's early stages was not as prominent at the start of Leg Two and many drivers elected for a slick tyre over winter studded rubber.

Gronholm however still looks comfortable to claim his first Monte Carlo Rally victory, having been in the top three performers on each of this morning's stages. He has now extended his lead over Stohl to just under two minutes.

Stohl has been impressive this morning, setting competitive times in his year-old Peugeot 307, moving up from fifth overnight to be Gronholm's chief rival.

Toni Gardemister holds onto third ahead of Chris Atkinson, who has adopted the more measured pace expected of him after yesterday's heroics. The Australian, on his first Monte Carlo Rally, was second overnight as problems befell the leading runners but has slipped to fourth after this morning's stages.

Atkinson is now just eight seconds ahead of teammate and second nominated Subaru points scorer Stephane Sarrazin. The pair are both likely to lose a position on the next few stages, as Loeb continues to move up the leaderboard.

Francois Duval, who was sixth overnight, was this morning's main casualty, when he left the road in his First Motorsport-run Skoda Fabia WRC and was unable to rejoin.

Fellow Skoda driver Gilles Panizzi is also having a poor day, and continued to drop down the order after running second yesterday. The former Mitsubishi driver is struggling with the handling of his Fabia, and now lies in seventh ahead of Gronholm's Ford teammate Mikko Hirvonen.

Pos  Driver              Make     Time
 1.  Marcus Gronholm     Ford     1h57:10.7
 2.  Manfred Stohl       Peugeot  +  1:58.8
 3.  Toni Gardemeister   Peugeot  +  2:09.0
 4.  Chris Atkinson      Subaru   +  2:47.1
 5.  Stephane Sarrazin   Subaru   +  2:55.5
 6.  Sebastien Loeb      Citroen  +  3:16.8
 7.  Gilles Panizzi      Skoda    +  3:51.2
 8.  Mikko Hirvonen      Ford     +  4:25.4
 9.  Daniel Sordo        Citroen  +  4:35.8
10.  Xavier Pons         Citroen  +  5:15.5