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Rally Sweden: Sebastien Ogier storms away

Volkswagen's Sebastien Ogier extended his Rally Sweden lead to 32 seconds over his former Citroen team-mate Sebastien Loeb by winning all three stages on the event's second loop

Loeb, unable to keep in touch with the VW driver's pace, has been battling with Ogier's team-mate Jari-Matti Latvala; the nine-time world champion edging ahead back into second place on Vargasen.

Latvala had previously led Loeb by a hundredth of a second, but an intercom failure on his Polo R WRC hampered his progress and let Loeb through by 1.5s on the following stage.

As they battled, Ogier coped best with the conditions. He now holds an almost assured overnight lead, with just the Karlstad superspecial stage to run this evening.

Qatar M-Sport's Mads Ostberg is poised to join the second-place battle in fourth, just nine seconds behind Latvala, and closing on the pair ahead following his morning dramas.

Ostberg's team-mate Evgeny Novikov is fifth, 29s behind the Norwegian and just over a minute off the rally lead. He has pushed star local rookie Pontus Tidemand back down to sixth.

Citroen's Dani Sordo lost five minutes with an off-stage excursion on SS6, meaning Loeb is now the only Citroen driver who can score major points, given the additional problems suffered by both Sordo and Mikko Hirvonen.

Leading positions after SS7:

Pos  Driver              Team/Car              Time/Gap
 1.  Sebastien Ogier     VW                  1h14m23.1s
 2.  Sebastien Loeb      Citroen                + 32.2s
 3.  Jari-Matti Latvala  VW                     + 33.7s
 4.  Mads Ostberg        Qatar M-Sport Ford     + 42.8s
 5.  Evgeny Novikov      Qatar M-Sport Ford   + 1m12.1s
 6.  Pontus Tidemand     PTM Ford             + 1m22.6s
 7.  Juho Hanninen       Qatar M-Sport Ford   + 1m48.7s
 8.  Thierry Neuville    Qatar M-Sport Ford   + 2m01.3s
 9.  Henning Solberg     M-Sport Ford         + 3m23.9s
10.  Martin Prokop       Czech Ford           + 4m39.9s

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