Loeb cruising to another victory

The championship leader took it relatively easy through SS10, then decided to pick up the pace and was fastest of all in SS11 and SS12. That burst of speed gave Loeb a 2:17 lead over Mikko Hirvonen at the end of the leg.

"I tried to slow down, but I don't know how to do it," said Loeb. "It was difficult and I was not in a good rhythm. So now I just try to drive fast. It's no problem."

Hirvonen has also eased away from the excitement behind, and had hoped for more competition: "I hate it," he said, "I want to always be in a fight."

Gigi Galli went into this afternoon with a narrow lead over Dani Sordo in the battle for third, but the Italian struggled in Monte Lermo, just as he had during this morning, and was very frustrated with his performance. Galli then had concerns about overheating in SS12, where he lost third to Sordo.

Xavier Pons now runs a lonely fifth after Chris Atkinson picked up over two minutes in time penalties for being late out of the lunchtime service. An awkward landing in the morning had damaged the air intake and steering on the Subaru Impreza, and although makeshift repairs on the road sections got the car back to service, there was still plenty of work for the Subaru crew to do when it got there.

Atkinson has now recovered to sixth, ahead of the impressive Jussi Valimaki, having his first outing in a private Mitsubishi and Kristian Sohlberg.

Petter Solberg may yet make it back into the points as well. He currently runs ninth, despite some problems with overheating in the last two stages of the day.

His elder brother Henning retired from third place when he crashed his OMV Peugeot into tree in SS9. Both Solberg and co-driver Cato Menkerud were unhurt.

Although many of the leading positions appear to be set, there is still the possibility of last minute drama tomorrow, as the cars must complete six stages without a service break on leg three.

Leaderboard after leg two:

Pos  Driver         Make              Time
 1.  Loeb           Citroen     3h 02:26.0
 2.  Hirvonen       Ford          + 2:17.0
 3.  Sordo          Citroen       + 2:56.0
 4.  Galli          Peugeot       + 2:57.3
 5.  Pons           Citroen       + 4:27.1
 6.  Atkinson       Subaru        + 5:56.7
 7.  Valimaki       Mitsubishi    + 6:01.6
 8.  Sohlberg       Subaru        + 6:29.1
 9.  P Solberg      Subaru        + 6:57.8
10.  Stohl          Peugeot       + 7:12.3
11.  Duval          Skoda         + 8:20.7
12.  MacHale        Ford         + 12:16.2
13.  Perez Companc  Ford         + 13:08.4
14.  Aigner         Skoda        + 13:18.1
15.  Rovanpera      Skoda        + 16:39.3
16.  Katajamaki     Ford         + 20:51.8
17.  H Solberg      Peugeot      + 22:17.7
18.  Wilks          Suzuki       + 22:32.6
19.  Gronholm       Ford         + 24:16.4
20.  Sandell        Renault      + 25:09.4