Sébastien Loeb (Citroën Total) has maintained his lead in Rally Norway, but the pace at the top of the leaderboard between the Frenchman and rival Mikko Hirvonen (BP Ford) has been furious. The duo have been in a league of their own during the day and while Jari-Matti Latvala (BP Ford) holds third, the Finn is 28.2 seconds adrift.

Perfect winter conditions greeted the crews again today as they left Hamar for two loops of four stages totalling 118.94 competitive kilometres. Loeb started the day with 2.6 seconds in hand but a string of four fastest stage times enabled the Frenchman to extend his lead to 10.7 seconds by the mid-day service.

This afternoon he was less dominant but rounded off the day with another stage victory to overnight 15 seconds ahead. Hirvonen has pushed hard and is the only other driver to be seriously challenging for victory. But, despite driving to the maximum the Finn can only hope that tomorrow’s longest day of competition will give him the opportunity and stage distance to overhaul Loeb.

A change in suspension set up this afternoon aided Latvala and the Finn is maintaining pressure, knowing that only an error by either Loeb or Hirvonen is going to help his chances. Local hero Henning Solberg (Stobart Ford) has climbed from seventh to fourth today and even set fastest time in stage 14 this afternoon. While a podium finish would be a dream result for the Norwegian, pressure to maintain position is coming from Dani Sordo (Citroën Total), who is just 12 seconds behind.

Petter Solberg lost time today with an engine related problem and he slips to sixth, only 2.3 seconds ahead of Matthew Wilson (Stobart Ford). Urmo Aava has climbed from 10th to eighth for the Citroën Junior Team. Per-Gunnar Andersson (Škoda Fabia) was forced to retire from fifth position with a broken clutch.

Rally Norway - Results after Day 2

1 Sébastien Loeb/Daniel Elena Citroën C4 WRC 2 hr 22 min 11.1sec
2 Mikko Hirvonen/Jarmo Lehtinen Ford Focus RS WRC 2 hr 22 min 26.1sec
3 Jari-Matti Latvala/Miikka Anttila Ford Focus RS WRC 2 hr 22 min 54.3sec
4 Henning Solberg/Cato Menkerud Ford Focus RS WRC 2 hr 24 min 52.4sec
5 Dani Sordo/Marc Marti Citroën C4 WRC 2 hr 25 min 04.4sec
6 Petter Solberg/Phil Mills Citroën Xsara WRC 2 hr 27 min 02.0sec
7 Matthew Wilson/Scott Martin Ford Focus RS WRC 2 hr 27 min 04.3sec
8 Urmo Aava/Kuldar Sikk Ford Focus RS WRC 2 hr 27 min 29.6sec