Gronholm starts to extend lead

The six-time winner of the event had been marginally faster than his teammate on most of the stages on Friday, but he has now stretched his lead to more than 11 seconds during the first loop of stages on day two.

Hirvonen is still comfortably clear of Sebastien Loeb, who took some satisfaction from his first stage win of the rally during the first stage of the day.

Gronholm responded by winning the next two stages though, and Loeb is now almost half a minute adrift of the rally leader.

Chris Atkinson remains in a lonely fourth place for Subaru, but his teammate Petter Solberg fell down the order after SS14 when he reported a return of the handling problems that plagued him on Friday morning.

That has promoted Dani Sordo into the top five, and the Spaniard now has a reasonably safe gap over the Ford of Henning Solberg.

Petter Solberg has slipped to seventh with his problems, while the consistent Xevi Pons has moved into the points after Manfred Stohl crashed during SS13.

Standings after SS14:

Pos  Driver      Car          Time
 1.  Gronholm    Ford         1h39:08.7
 2.  Hirvonen    Ford             +11.1
 3.  Loeb        Citroen          +29.8
 4.  Atkinson    Subaru         +1:15.1
 5.  Sordo       Citroen        +2:10.6
 6.  H Solberg   Ford           +2:50.9
 7.  P Solberg   Subaru         +3:14.8
 8.  Pons        Subaru         +3:56.8
 9.  Aava        Mitsubishi     +3:57.3
10.  Wilks       Ford           +4:14.3