Loeb closes in on Gronholm

The champion began the day in third place and 35 seconds behind Gronholm, who then extended his advantage slightly by winning SS8.

But in the 37.33km Kineta 1 stage, Loeb's tyre choice worked a lot better, and he was able to interrupt Gronholm's run of stage victories. Loeb took 9.7 seconds out of Gronholm's lead, and jumped up to second ahead of Petter Solberg in the process.

"That's quite a lot to lose," Gronholm admitted when he saw Loeb's time. "That was not too good."

Gronholm then halted Loeb's charge by going fastest in SS10, albeit only one second quicker than Loeb, who is now 29.2 seconds in arrears.

"It's going well," Loeb said. "We changed the settings yesterday evening and it's better. I tried really, really hard in the long stage.

"It was really fun this morning. I'm pushing hard and it's exciting."

Gronholm reckoned that the key difference this morning had been the tyre choice.

"On the long stage we definitely had the wrong tyres and Loeb beat us there," said Gronholm. "But we are not panicking."

Solberg lost crucial ground to Loeb when he stalled at a tight hairpin in SS9, and then dropped further behind with a mistake in Psatha 1.

"We went off just before the finish and we lost a lot of time," Solberg said. "We're struggling with traction on the loose."

Mikko Hirvonen holds fourth, too far behind the leaders to challenge for the podium, and now comfortably ahead of what remains a very tense battle for the remaining points positions.

That group is now headed by Manfred Stohl, with the flying Dani Sordo progressing from ninth to sixth during this loop of stages.

Henning Solberg reclaimed sixth from teammate Stohl in the day's first stage, only to drop a lot of time when he ran out of brakes in the long Kineta 1. He then incurred a time penalty for checking in late for Psatha 1 after making a fruitless attempt to cure the problem on the road section.

The OMV Peugeot driver had to tackle the stage virtually brakeless but still set the third fastest time and recovered much of the lost ground.

Toni Gardemeister is now eighth after overshooting a junction and stalling in SS10, while Francois Duval dropped from a very competitive fifth to a distant ninth this morning after several problems in SS9.

"I went off the road and lost a minimum of 10 seconds," said the Skoda privateer. "After that the car was very difficult to drive. I don't know if I had a puncture."

Xavier Pons completes the current top 10, with Jussi Valimaki falling away from the points battle after going off on today's first stage and losing nearly two minutes.

Although Kosti Katajamaki completed the morning in 11th place, he damaged his Ford in Psatha 1 and had to stop after the stage. He is currently struggling to get the car back to the lunchtime service.

Leaderboard after SS10:

Pos  Driver        Make              Time
 1.  Gronholm      Ford        2h 05:46.5
 2.  Loeb          Citroen      +    29.2
 3.  P Solberg     Subaru       +    57.2
 4.  Hirvonen      Ford         +  2:16.1
 5.  Stohl         Peugeot      +  3:02.7
 6.  Sordo         Citroen      +  3:12.1
 7.  H Solberg     Peugeot      +  3:14.1
 8.  Gardemeister  Citroen      +  3:15.7
 9.  Duval         Skoda        +  3:27.9
10.  Pons          Citroen      +  3:56.6
11.  Katajamaki    Ford         +  5:24.6
12.  Atkinson      Subaru       +  5:33.9
13.  Valimaki      Mitsubishi   +  5:39.9
14.  Kopecky       Skoda        +  5:55.2
15.  Rovanpera     Skoda        +  7:14.0
16.  Wilson        Ford         +  7:31.5
17.  Aigner        Skoda        +  7:33.7
18.  Vovos         Subaru       + 13:34.3
19.  Pozzo         Mitsubishi   + 14:12.9
20.  Al-Attiyah    Subaru       + 14:44.9