"The car has been consistent today, which has helped me to improve my times," he explained. "We’ve come from somewhere like eighth this morning to a podium position now. That is great!"
Sordo in contrast was disappointed with his pace in the final loop, but with only 1 second between him and Atkinson, it is clear the battle for P3 is far, far from over and the
Citroen #2 still has three tests to reclaim the spot.
Further down the order
Henning Solberg completes the top five, the Norwegian said that he just wasn’t able to find a good rhythm. He had been third overnight, but now finds himself almost 30 seconds off the battle between Atkinson and Sordo.
"It has been a difficult day. I’m driving quite hard and my times are really good on the fast sections and the car feels great. But on the narrow roads I just struggle to make it work well," he explained.
"The feeling isn’t the same as yesterday and I thought the new stages today would work to my advantage but they haven’t. We had a few moments, especially at the corner where Gigi went off, so I backed off in that stage as it was very difficult but also very fast. So the plan tomorrow is to get to the finish safely; we are still in line for some good points."
Petter Solberg trails his brother - 30 seconds or so further back and while Atkinson seemed to get to grips with the new Impreza WRC2008 today 'Hollywood' didn’t make much progress.
"That was not good," said the 2003 world rally champion. "The car was strange. It didn’t work at all."
Ford privateer Matti Rantanen and Suzuki’s
Toni Gardemeister round out the points’ scorers in seventh and eighth, the latter sticking at it despite being in pain after injuring his shoulder on day 1.
Gardemeister also lost over 60 seconds this morning when the power steering failed, but despite that he is still on course to take the final point with the new 'B-spec' SX4 WRC, 25 seconds up on Britain’s
Matthew Wilson.
PH Sport-Citroen man
Conrad Rautenbach finished proceedings in tenth, with Khalid Al-Qassimi eleventh in the 'third'
BP Ford Abu Dhabi WRT entry.
