Penalty for Petter

The world champion was given his penalty after his Subaru Impreza was discovered to be without mudflaps, and it cut his lead to 28.5s before the final day's six stages had even begun.

"On behalf of our team I would like to apologise to Petter Solberg that a common, minor technical infringement has resulted in a halving of his rally lead," said Subaru team principal David Lapworth. "Our oversight in not re-fitting the mud-flaps provided no competitive advantage whatsoever and occurred when replacing the damaged rear bumper of his car. We hope that the penalty will have no bearing on the result of this rally."

Solberg didn't take any chances this morning and took a stage win on SS18 and was never out of the top three fastest runners as he rocketed through the first three stages of the day, re-establishing his lead to 31.1s.

Citroen star Loeb made it clear from the outset that he wanted to finish in second place on the Acropolis Rally, going quickest on the morning's first stage, SS17, and closing to within three seconds of Rovanpera, who could only manage third best time. The Finn struck back on SS18, gaining 0.9s on the Frenchman, only for Loeb to close within 0.3s of the Peugeot driver as they reached the final service area after SS19.

Ford Focus driver Francois Duval appears to have settled for fourth place overall and is dropping away from the battle for second, perhaps lying in wait in the hope that the pair in front of him will push each other too far.

Daniel Carlsson's extraordinary run in fifth place with the privateer Bozian Peugeot 206 WRC continues apace. More than four minutes adrift of Duval he may be, but Carlsson seems more than capable of maintaining the 40s advantage he has over Gilles Panizzi's Mitsubishi Lancer in sixth, who in turn is on course to match the new car's best finish.

Manfred Stohl and Janne Tuohino complete the list of drivers running in the points. This doesn't of course include factory drivers Markko Martin (Ford), Marcus Gronholm (Peugeot), Toni Gardemeister (Skoda), Armin Schwarz (Skoda) and Dani Sola (Mitsubishi), all of whom have retired and subsequently taken advantage of the new SupeRally rules that allow them to rejoin the rally.

Nearly all of them have featured in the top ten on stage times this morning, Martin most prominently of all.

Another to feature in the stage times this morning was Carlos Sainz. The Citroen driver is still fighting back from damper problems on leg one but he is a long way back in 25th more than 40m adrift of the lead.