Gronholm, a two-time world champion, ended the day with a 22.9-second advantage over Citroen’s Sebastien Loeb, who looks set to claim the lead in the title race.

Loeb is just a point behind championship leader Markko Martin but overhauled the Ford driver for second with some fast times today and will take over top spot if he can continue that form on tomorrow’s final six stages.

Solberg mounted a battling fightback to move into the points position after losing almost 10 minutes yesterday with his mechanical problem.

The Subaru driver ended the day in eighth place and is less than a minute behind Janne Tuohino’s Ford in seventh.

Solberg was not dwelling on what might have been though, and set his sights on scoring world championship points tomorrow.

“It’s been very good today actually,” he said. “Apart from the problem yesterday, I’d be very happy.

“The car is running perfectly now. We’ve made a small modification to the radiator, but for me the objective is to now test as much as possible and get as many points from here as I can.”

Solberg, 11th overnight, won stage seven in nine minutes 10.1 seconds from Gronholm.

He made it two out of two today with victory on stage eight, taking the honours in 27mins 17.1secs to move into 10th overall, over two minutes away from the points.

Solberg’s winning streak came to a halt on stage nine, the third of the day, when Loeb set the quickest time.

The Frenchman completed the 13 kilometres in 10mins 43secs to leapfrog Martin into second overall.

Solberg won the next one though, completing the 11km in 9mins 4secs to finally break into the points in eighth.

Stage 11 was cancelled due to spectator overcrowding before Loeb won the final stage of the day in 10mins 28.2secs.