Loeb leads, Ketomma surprises, Hirvonen disappoints

Championship leader, Sébastien Loeb will begin day 2 as he did day one as the road sweeper for the rest of the tightly bunched field.

Loeb set fastest time on two of three stages, but will most certainly lose time on day 2 when he opens the road for more than 130 kms of high-speed action on the WRC’s most prestigious round.

Sébastien Ogier in the other factory DS3 WRC is second overall at 2.8 seconds, followed by Ford’s Jari-Matti Latvala and a second Fiesta, driven by stage one victor Ketomaa, who has stated his intention to go for the win on his home rally. Starting fourth could be just the ticket for the young Finn. who is just seven seconds adrift of Loeb.  

As for Mikko Hirvonen…the current second in the championship, suffered an engine hiccup in the opening kilometres of the day, which sent off the road and into a tree, resulting in a brake problem as well as some suspension damage. The winner of Rally Finland 2009 is now more than two-minutes down the order and could easily lose his spot in the points table to Ogier come Saturday evening.

Petter Solberg is fifth overall at 12.6 seconds, just 1.7s ahead of Dani Sordo in the best placed Mini. S-WRC leader, Ott Tanak, once again proved that Markko Martin knows how to pick local talent. The very gifted Estonian is seventh at 17.3 seconds. Mads Ostberg is next, followed by the second factory John Cooper Works WRC and Juho Hanninen, second in WRC and 10^th overall.

SS3
1 Loeb
2 Ogier +1.1s
3 P. Solberg+1.4s
4 Latvala+1.9s
5 Ostberg +2.8s
6 Ketomaa+4.3s
7 H. Solberg+4.7s
8 Novikov+5.1s
9 Sordo+5.8s
10 Wilson+6.0s

AFTER SS3
1 Loeb
2 Ogier+2.8s
3 Latvala+4.4s
4 Ketomaa+7.0s
5 P. Solberg+12.6s
6 Sordo+14.3s
7 Tanak+17.3s
8 Ostberg+18.6s 
9 Meeke+20.9s
10 Hanninen+25.8s