Martin makes breakthrough

The former Ford driver was baffled by his new car on leg one in Sweden and made a number of changes during the day. These appeared to pay off, as he was able to set top five stage times this morning.

"I've felt much more confident with the car today," said Martin. "We made changes to the set-up which made it more predictable and I feel a lot happier with the car."

Martin moved into fifth place in the overall standings after going fourth quickest on SS10, but then a differential failure 1km into SS11 caused severe handling problems. These gremlins were compounded by the loss of first and second gear on the road section before service.

"It's a real shame we had the differential problems because we'd got the longer studs (on our tyres) which would have worked better in the snow," said Martin. "That could've got us close to the top three.

"It seems every time we almost get there something knocks us back again."

With Francois Duval losing four minutes after a double puncture, Martin was elevated back into fifth place at the end of the morning but is still over 1m30s from the lead.