Mikko Hirvonen has extended his advantage over Sébastien Loeb after the second day of competition in Rally Sweden. The Finn now leads by 16.6 seconds with five stages remaining on Sunday. Third position is held by Jari-Matti Latvala, who benefitted when Dani Sordo was forced to stop in the penultimate stage.

Today’s route took in another two loops of four stages covering 117.76 competitive kilometres. Early morning temperatures plunged to -22ºC but, as the sun rose, blue skies and sunshine made for a stunning Scandinavian winter’s day.

Hirvonen made his intentions clear from the outset, the Ford driver winning the first stage to consolidate his overnight advantage. However, Loeb fought back to take victory on the following three stages, closing the gap to 4.2 seconds when Hirvonen also stalled on the start line of SS12.

The repeated stages in the afternoon saw Latvala and Marcus Grönholm dominate, but an inspired decision to swap tyres before the final three rutted stages of the day gave Hirvonen a greater advantage over Loeb, who changed the tyres in preparation for the last two stages only. As a consequence, the Finn extended his lead to 23 seconds, before losing a handful of seconds to his rival in the last 1.87 kilometre stage, his earlier all-out attack resulting in a lack of studs in the tyres.

Citroen suffered another set-back when Dani Sordo had to stop in SS15 to remove a snow shield from the engine compartment. It cost the Spaniard a minute, dropping him behind Latvala and into a distant fourth position. Sébastien Ogier adopted the same tyre strategy as Loeb and suffered oversteer, but the Frenchman has maintained fifth position. Henning Solberg holds sixth with Matthew Wilson climbing one place to seventh.  

Former World Rally Champion Petter Solberg has climbed from 13th to ninth. After their problems yesterday, Marcus Grönholm and Kimi Räikkönen continue to push, although Grönholm had a puncture and went off the road, and the former F1 World Champion - who is on an immense learning curve - lost another minute when he too went off. They are 29th and 35th respectively.

Rally Sweden – Results after Day 2