He will now rejoin the fold on Saturday under the SupeRally, although he is way down the order, nearly 20 minutes off a place in the top 10.
Loeb's exit bumped
Henning Solberg up to P3 and he finished the leg less than 10 seconds off Mikko. Henning enjoyed a strong day in his
Stobart Ford Focus and posted top six times in every single stage.
Further down the order,
Gigi Galli is fourth in the sister Stobart car nominated to score manufacturers' points and the Italian isn't far off third either, just 5.7 seconds further back.
Like Henning he had a good day, gradually upping his pace and setting two second quickest times and a third in the afternoon. He also led the way and took the win in SS8, Karlstad 2.
Petter Solberg completes the top five, around 40 seconds off the battling Fords and nearly 30 seconds up on Mads Ostberg, who is in P6 in his Adapta-run Impreza WRC and on course for the privateer 'win'.
Matthew Wilson is next up and well placed to get his first points' finish of the year, followed by Suzuki’s
Toni Gardemeister, who had differential problems this afternoon and had to switch to the manual gearshift.
At least he got to the end of the day though, as his team-mate and local hero, Per-Gunnar Andersson wasn’t so fortunate. P-G was sidelined by engine problems in SS4 and will not be able to re-start on Saturday.
Andreas Mikkelsen and Patrik Sandell round out the top ten, the latter also heading the
FIA Production Car World Rally Championship category, 15.8 seconds up on Juho Hanninen, who finished in P11 overall.
Of the rest,
BP Ford Abu Dhabi WRT ‘third’ driver Khalid Al-Qassimi was twelfth, on his first ever outing on snow, while
Citroen privateer
Conrad Rautenbach was 14th and Dani Sordo 17th in the #2 works C4 WRC. Sordo started the event a long way down, having picked up a 5 minute penalty for an engine change prior to the start. Without that he would have sixth tonight.
![Jari-Matti Latvala (FIN) / Miikka Anttila (FIN) BP Ford Focus RS WRC 07. Swedish Rally. February 7-10 2008. [PIC CREDIT: FORD / worldrallypics.com]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/405527.jpg)
