Luis-Perez Companc is next up in fourth, albeit more than 3 minutes further back in his Munchi's Ford Focus. The Argentine is 21.7 seconds up on
Matthew Wilson, who is currently set to notch up his best ever result in the WRC.
Manfred Stohl rounds out the top six in his OMV Kronos-run
Citroen Xsara WRC, having lost ground and dropped behind Companc and Wilson following mechanical problems in SS14.
Further down the order, Munchi's #2 driver
Federico Villagra looks set to get two points, while Katsuhiko Taguchi is eighth and on course not only to take the Group N win, but the final ‘senior' WRC point too.
Of the rest, Loeb and Latvala weren't the only two ‘works' drivers to have problems, as Xavier Pons also went off the road. The Spaniard lost it in SS12 and beached his Impreza WRC car. Although the car was undamaged he couldn't continue.
Pons' exit meant only
Petter Solberg remained to fly the flag for the
Subaru World Rally team on its home event. Despite being well down the order though after gear selection problems put him out on day 1, ‘Hollywood' set some very competitive times - including taking four stage wins. He hauled himself up from 64th place to 24th by the end of the leg.
Chris Atkinson and Marcus Gronholm both retired on Friday too, like Petter, however they were not able to restart as their cars were too badly damaged. Gronholm damaged his roll cage in his off in SS4, while Atkinson had quite a sizeable off in SS6.
In the
FIA Production Car WRC category, Gabriel Pozzo leads by more than 1.5 minutes after Fumio Nutahara had problems this morning.
Takuma Kamada heads the chasing pack, with Leszek Kuzaj third followed by Armindo Araujo, Evgeniy Vertunov and Mark Higgins.
Runaway PWRC championship leader, Toshi Arai ended the day outside of the PWRC points in 12th after his problems on day 1 in SS7.
The action now resumes on Sunday - seven more stages lay in wait, totally around 97 competitive kilometres.
