Dani Sordo continues to lead the way on Rally de Espana after the second morning, having retained a slender advantage over Citroen team-mate Sebastien Loeb through the first three stages of the day.

Sordo went into the second day with a narrow advantage over the defending champion but saw the Frenchman go quickest on SS7 to put the pair level at the head of the standings. Loeb then took the lead on SS8 only for Sordo to go quicker on SS9 to take an advantage of less than a second to the mid-day service.

“It feels good now - I can attack more," he said. "It's close with Sebastien, but I think he has more to give, when I'm almost on the limit. On this stage there was a lot of grip on the surface and that meant there wasn't so much understeer. I'm enjoying it."

Loeb himself admitted it has been an 'interesting' morning but extended his advantage over title rival Mikko Hirvonen, who lost further time to the Citroen duo to drop to 44.6secs behind the leader, while Petter Solberg and Sebastien Ogier hold fourth and fifth – the latter having gone quickest on the second stage of the day.

Jari-Matti Latvala retains sixth in the second of the factory Fords, but seventh placed Evgeny Novikov saw his challenge come to an end on the opening stage of the day when he crashed 9.4km into the 38.27km test – the longest of the event.

The retirement of the young Russian has allowed Matthew Wilson, Federico Villagra and Henning Solberg to move up a place, while the top ten is now completed by the Peugeot 307 WRC of Dany Snobeck.