The fight for honours on Rally d'Italia Sardinia looks set to be an all-Ford affair heading into the final day after
Jari-Matti Latvala successfully held his lead through Saturday's six stages in the Meditteranean.
The young Finn went into the day leading team-mate
Mikko Hirvonen by just under 40 seconds, but faced the prospect of sweeping the road for the cars behind.
However, Latvala proved more than capable of fighting from the front to remain in the lead, although his advantage over Hirvonen now lies at less than ten second after his countryman closed in on the repeat run through the three stages that made up the day's action.
Hirvonen had looked set to battle for position throughout the day with championship leader Sebastien Loeb, with a penalty for starting stage nine a minute late being the only thing preventing the Frenchman from moving into second place during the morning.
However, on the second stage of the afternoon, Loeb's fortunes took a turn for the worse when he had to stop and change a puncture on stage eleven and dropped just over a minute. As a result, the Frenchman has now slipped to fourth place, but is expected to take third from
Petter Solberg during the final day – with the Norwegian just 2.2 seconds ahead at the wheel of his
Citroen Xsara.
Loeb wasn't the only driver to run into problems on stage eleven, with the second run through Fiorentini mixing up the order further doing the points scoring positions.
Going into the stage, Dani Sordo had held the position but his
Citroen C4 developed turbo issues which saw him lose over four minutes. Further time would be lost on the final stage of the day to leave the Spaniard well off the pace down in eighth.
Henning Solberg dropped out on stage eleven after suffering broken suspension, while
Conrad Rautenbach was also forced out after suffering a damper failure on his
Citroen Junior Team C4. That came a stage after
Sebastien Ogier – running under SupeRally – retired with a similar problem.
At the end of the day, young Russian
Evgeny Novikov in the lone remaining Junior Team entry holds a lonely fifth place after fellow young gun
Mads Ostberg was forced to retire from the leg towards the end of the final stage. Ostberg hadn't enjoyed the easiest of days at the wheel of his Adapta Subaru after suspension problems during the morning loop.