Gronholm heads field in Finland
Marcus Gronholm continued his personal domination of the Rally of Finland with a superb performance today.
The Finn has won five of the last six editions of this race and he looks determined to add another triumph to the list after building up a 12-second lead over Sebastien Loeb after the first nine stages.
Gronholm won five of the stages, with defending world champion Loeb claiming the other four – including the opening stage on Thursday evening.
In third place at the end of Friday’s stages was Gronholm’s countryman and Ford team-mate Mikko Hirvonen while Norwegian brothers Petter and Henning Solberg were fourth and fifth respectively.
Gronholm had looked in determined mood from the off, winning the opening three stages of the day, as Loeb found himself cast down in fourth place.
But the Frenchman showed his class by coming home fastest on stages five and six to haul himself into race-winning contention against the only man who has a realistic chance of stopping him from claiming a third successive world rally crown.
Gronholm responded to the pressure though by taking the next stage and extending his lead over Loeb to 17.2 seconds.
The 38-year-old Gronholm also won the day’s final stage but Loeb, looking for a WRC record 27th victory, did enough over the final two rounds to trim the Finn’s overall advantage to 12 seconds.
Gronholm, who is 33 points behind Loeb in the overall World Rally Championship standings, was satisfied with his day’s racing but admits he struggled over the testing conditions on the closing stages.
“It was so slippery, really incredible. It was going well, but we lost too much time in this mud (on stage eight), but it’s okay,” he said on Eurosport.
Loeb, whose victory in Germany last week was his sixth of the season, echoed those thoughts, saying: “The two last stages were incredible. I had doubts over the car. It was really muddy and I tried to push too hard, and made more mistakes.
“We had a difficult start. We were on the limit really hard, but it seems we are fighting a bit with Marcus, so tomorrow should be a good day.”
The Rally of Finland is the 10th event of the 16-race WRC season.
