A Citroen fight

Sébastien Loeb leads Mikko Hirvonen on Rally Finland by just 3 seconds heading to the evening Super Special.

The Citroen aces were covered by 3.3 seconds after Hirvonen took SS9 and 1.7 seconds out of Loeb. Loeb answered back on SS10, edging the Finn by 0.4s, but on the final proper stage of the day Hirvonen gained 0.7s to cut the lead to 3 seconds. No team orders for the moment and “Hirvo” would like nothing more than to have a fair shot at racing Loeb for the win.

Over at Ford it is status quo with Jari-Matti Latvala third overall at 20.seconds adrift, but he is 0.9s ahead of Petter Solberg, who scored his first scratch time of the rally on Lankamma 2.

Mads Ostberg is now a comfortable fifth overall after Thierry Neuville rolled his DS3 WRC On SS11. The Belgian was looking a strong bet to get past Ostberg, but his day is done and dusted. Ott Tanalk moves up to sixth. Rounding out the top ten are Jari Ketomaa, MAti Rantanen, Marti Prokop and Ken Block.

TOP TEN SS 11
1 Solberg
2 Hirvonen +0.1s
3 Loeb + 0.8s
4 Latvala +2.9s
5 Ostberg +5.8s
6 Ketomaa +11.6s
7 Tanak +13.2s
8 Novikov + 16.0s
9 Rantanen +20.2s
10 Prokop + 22.6s

TOP TEN AFTER SS 11
1 Loeb
2 Hirvonen +3.0s
3 Latvala +20.0s
4 Solberg +20.9s
5 Ostberg +45.4s
6 Tanak + 1:34.8s
7 Ketomaa + 2:25.7s
8 Rantanen +2:44.0s
9 Prokop + 3:15.8s
10 Block + 4:44.3s