Intro:

Sebastien Loeb has maintained a slender lead over Mikko Hirvonen midway through leg two of Rally New Zealand.

He is now just 1.7 seconds ahead of his Citroen team-mate.

Script:

After Saturday's first two stages of Rall New Zealand it looked like Sebastian Loeb would quickly put the rally beyond Mikko Hirvonen's reach.

The reigning World Rally champion quickly establishing an eight-second lead over his Citroen team-mate.

But it took just one strong stage time from Hirvonen to reduce the deficit, as the Finn's pace on the final stage of the morning brought him back to within 1.7s of the Frenchman.

Norway's Petter Solberg was fastest on two of the three morning stages, and that helped move the factory Ford past M-Sport Ford driver Evgeny Novikov of Russia into third place.

Novikov's main task will now be keeping his M-Sport Ford team-mate Ott Tanak behind him.

In the second works Ford, Jari-Matti Latvala recovered to eighth following an error on Friday, but is now two minutes adrift of next target Dani Sordo.

A damper problem cost Armindo Araujo time and saw his Mini start to come under a hint of pressure from the increasingly confident Ken Block for Monster Ford.