Loeb fights back in Finland

After struggling to match Gronholm's pace through the first three tests of the morning, Loeb has proved masterful to take victory in the latest two, drier, stages.

He has jumped from fourth to second and narrowed Gronholm's lead to 13.0 seconds, with two full stages and a superspecial still to come today.

Gronholm, who has won five of the last six Rally Finland, believed his times were quick through the stages, and so Loeb's pace may prove a cause for concern to the Finn.

Loeb has never won this event, and should he overhaul Gronholm and win, he will standalone as the WRC driver with the most career victories.

Mikko Hirvonen has dropped back slightly to 4.0 seconds behind Loeb, and is 18.1 seconds behind his teammate Gronholm.

Subaru's Petter Solberg has also dropped back, and is now 9.3 seconds behind Hirvonen, and a comfortable 26.8 seconds in front of his teammate Chris Atkinson.

Henning Solberg has taken the initiative in the tight battle for sixth place. After SS4, just 0.1 seconds separated him from Kristian Sohlberg and Daniel Carlsson. However, after the third fastest time on SS6, Solberg moved to a 34-second advantage over Carlsson's Peugeot.

Sohlberg was making a fight of it until he lost engine power in SS6 and his team advised him to stop and retire from the leg to prevent further damage to the engine.

Manfred Stohl dropped to 23rd after problems in both of the next loop of stages. In SS5 he reported problems with his intercom and couldn't hear what co-driver Ilka Minor was saying, and in SS6 he went off the road.

Dani Sordo is up to 11th, recovering from the windscreen wiper failure he suffered when it was raining heavily in SS4 this morning.

Pos Driver      Car         Time
 1. Gronholm    Ford        47:06.8
 2. Loeb        Citroen     + 13.0
 3. Hirvonen    Ford        + 22.6
 4. Solberg     Subaru      + 33.0
 5. Atkinson    Subaru      + 01:04.7
 6. Solberg     Peugeot     + 01:21.7
 7. Carlsson    Mitsubishi  + 01:55.7
 8. Katajamaki  Ford        + 01:58.6
 9. Valimaki    Mitsubishi  + 02:01.1
10. Tuohino     Citroen     + 02:01.9
11. Sordo       Citroen     + 02:04.2
12. Hanninen    Mitsubishi  + 02:14.4
13. Galli       Peugeot     + 02:22.3
14. Latvala     Toyota      + 03:13.7
15. Pons        Citroen     + 03:14.3