Petter Solberg has insisted that he did have the measure of his older brother Henning in Poland last weekend - and that he only lost out due to an oil leak.

Petter had begun the final day narrowly in front of his sibling. However, he slipped back in SS14, the first stage on the Sunday, when he had a problem with the dip-stick for the oil on his privately-run Citroen Xsara WRC.

That incident cost him possibly 10 seconds and while 'Hollywood' eventually finished nearly 30 seconds back in total, he still felt he could have won the battle for fourth - or what actually turned out to be third, after Jari-Matti Latvala's accident in the super special.

"This has been an unbelievably fast rally," said the ex-Subaru WRT man. "We have been absolutely flat out all the time and totally on the limit, but it was never enough.

"Our old car is lacking power, compared to the new ones and it is almost impossible to keep up with them on the fast sections.

"Also the oil leak [this morning] costs us a lot of seconds, without it I'm sure we could have kept Henning behind us."

Petter's co-driver, Phil Mills concurred that oil leak in SS14, the 27.07 kilometre Milki stage was a real issue and something that left them struggling for visibility.

"About halfway through the stage, we had to turn on the wipers to clean the wind screen for what we thought was water," Mills added. "Instead it was oil, and it made it almost impossible to see anything..."

The WRC now heads to Finland at the end of next month and there is speculation Petter will switch to a different car for that event, having recently tested a Mitsubishi and before that a Subaru. He is also due to test a Peugeot at some point too - possibly this week.