Loeb remains unstoppable in Spain

The world champion remains unbeaten in the stages, going fastest through all three tests on this morning's loop having also taken a clean sweep of stage wins on Friday.

Sordo has continued to steadily drop time to his team leader and is now 20.7 seconds adrift of Loeb, but said he wasn't ready to settle into team formation yet.

"I'm never ready for second place," Sordo insisted. "But Sebastien is really fast. I'm happy with the gap to Duval, that's important."

Third-placed Francois Duval managed to minimise the time loss to the Citroens this morning, but the Ford driver still ended the loop 50 seconds behind Loeb.

"I drove at maximum attack this morning, but to beat Citroen is difficult," said the Belgian.

Duval has continued to edge away from his teammate Mikko Hirvonen, though, with the gap between the Fords up to 11.2 seconds.

Hirvonen was slightly reassured by Ford's improved pace this morning, despite Citroen continuing to pull away.

"We are still losing time but it's definitely a little bit better than yesterday," he said. "We are not so far behind the Citroens on every stage. We'll just keep on going and see if we can find more speed."

The battle for fifth place has closed up, with Subaru's Petter Solberg now only 9.8 seconds clear of semi-works Citroen driver Urmo Aava as the Estonian WRC rookie put on a charge and former champion Solberg lost a little time with an error in SS9.

Chris Atkinson (Subaru) and Jari-Matti Latvala (Stobart Ford) also remain in this fight, with Atkinson moving up to seventh at Latvala's expense this morning. The Finn was frustrated by an unproductive change to softer settings, and Atkinson looked set to rapidly pull away from him and close on Aava, only to lose ground in the slippery sections of the La Llena stage.

Andreas Mikkelsen (Ramsport Ford) and Matthew Wilson (Stobart Ford) complete the top ten at the rally's halfway point.

Leading positions after SS9:

Pos  Driver     Car      Time
 1.  Loeb       Citroen  1h46:20.7
 2.  Sordo      Citroen   +   23.7
 3.  Duval      Ford      +   50.4
 4.  Hirvonen   Ford      + 1:01.6
 5.  P Solberg  Subaru    + 2:34.2
 6.  Aava       Citroen   + 2:44.0
 7.  Atkinson   Subaru    + 3:01.8
 8.  Latvala    Ford      + 3:02.2
 9.  Mikkelsen  Ford      + 3:28.8
10.  Wilson     Ford      + 5:12.6