Loeb on brink of Ireland victory

The reigning champion had a difficult morning, with an electrical problem on his Citroen causing him to leave service one minute late and pick up a 10 second penalty. He also had to use cut slick tyres in the wet conditions as he had no rain tyres remaining.

But despite those glitches, Loeb had no problems in the stages and is still almost a minute ahead of his teammate Dani Sordo.

"It's working okay," said Loeb. "I have a lot of cuts (in the tyres) - maybe too much if I want to go as fast as possible. But we just played it safe. We need to finish, so no risks."

Barring any late disasters, the top eight positions appear to be settled. Ford's Mikko Hirvonen was quickest through SS17 and SS18, reducing the gap to third-placed Jari-Matti Latvala to 16 seconds.

However Hirvonen is under strict instructions to reach the finish and collect the handful of points required to clinch the manufacturers' title for Ford, so Latvala's first podium finish should be secure.

A time-consuming puncture in this morning's first stage ended Petter Solberg's chance of pushing Hirvonen for fourth, and the Subaru driver has now settled for fifth position.

His teammate Chris Atkinson, who had recovered to 29th after losing 25 minutes with a crash on Friday morning, had to withdraw from the rally before the start of the third leg after Subaru discovered an engine fault in last night's service.

But Subaru will still have two cars in the top six as Guy Wilks continues to hold sixth in the privateer DMG-prepared Impreza. The former Junior class frontrunner is set to score his first ever WRC points.

Seventh-placed Matthew Wilson has extended his lead over Gareth MacHale, who called off his bid for seventh after losing time with an overshoot in the Murley stage.

Andreas Mikkelsen remains on course for ninth in his privateer Ford, and was third quickest in SS18.

Niall McShea briefly took over 10th place and the Production class lead from Armindo Araujo in Murley, then fell behind the Portuguese driver again in the following Fardross stage. Long-time class leader Mark Higgins had crashed out near the end of leg two, ending his title bid.

Leading positions after SS18:

Pos  Driver     Car         Time
 1.  Loeb       Citroen     2h53:04.0
 2.  Sordo      Citroen     +    54.3
 3.  Latvala    Ford        +  2:02.7
 4.  Hirvonen   Ford        +  2:18.5
 5.  P Solberg  Subaru      +  3:00.8
 6.  Wilks      Subaru      +  6:07.7
 7.  Wilson     Ford        +  9:51.7
 8.  G MacHale  Ford        + 10:44.0
 9.  Mikkelsen  Ford        + 13:01.3
10.  Araujo     Mitsubishi  + 15:58.2