"I want Ford to score as many points as possible and Mikko has the advantage over me here," Duval added. "Second would be important for him also in the drivers' championship, so I prefer not to take risks and stay on the road. I expected to be faster than him this morning but he's very quick on asphalt this year. Third would be a good result for me."
Further down the order
Jari-Matti Latvala came through to stake his claim for fourth on his second run this season under the
Stobart banner. Jari-Matti moved passed Petter in SS9 and increase the gap from 2.6 seconds to 22.4 seconds in the afternoon.
"Everything seemed to go perfect today but we never really did anything differently it all just seemed to click into place," said Latvala. "We even carried two spares for safety on the afternoon loop when most other people had one so the extra weight made no difference to our speed at all. After service I couldn't believe how my times were so good. I have just been trying to drive more precisely like I learnt in Spain last week and it is working well; now we are in a much stronger fourth position."
Chris Atkinson had been in the hunt for P4 post-day one, however, a puncture in SS9 dropped him out of contention. He now lies in a lonely sixth - almost 2 minutes off 'Hollywood' in the sister Impreza WRC2008 and a similar amount up on
Citroen privateer
Urmo Aava in seventh.
"We were pushing hard this morning and were pretty close to Jari-Matti and Petter, but then we got a puncture on the middle stage of the morning," noted Atkinson. "Now there's 1minute 50s ahead of us and 1minute 40s behind. You've got to keep pushing on roads like these though, but the idea is to get the points for sixth and see if anyone else who's pushing has a problem."
Brice Tirabassi rounds out the provisional points' scorers' in eighth, after
Toni Gardemeister had fuel pressure problems in SS10 and lost over 4 minutes. The Finn plummeted down from 8th to 13th, with Matt Wilson ninth and Mads Ostberg tenth.
