SS4: Citroens on a charge

Citroen DS3 WRC drivers grabbed the top three times on stage four of Rally Sweden, allowing Mikko Hirvonen to close to within a few fractions of a second of overall leader Jari-Matti Latvala.

Although the Kirkener stage is just 7.1 kilometres long, Hirvonen managed to beat team-mate Sebastien Loeb to the fastest time by 1.9 seconds, and to take 3.5s out of his erstwhile Ford team-mate Latvala, who held on to his outright first position.

"You really need to push hard to fight against those Ford boys," Hirvonen said. "There is a long way to go, but we have to stay in the fight and we’re there, so that’s good."

Latvala’s team-mate Petter Solberg had been second after stage three, but a spin on stage four dropped him to fifth overall behind Mads Ostberg (Adapta Ford) and Sebastien Loeb (Citroen).

"We had a spin and got stuck and lost maybe 15s," said Solberg, who was 11.5s off the fastest time. "We need to just calm down and not think about it."

A superb third fastest time went to Citroen Junior driver Thierry Neuville, as the rising Belgian star belied his lack of snow experience. But running first on the road after Paulo Nobre’s earlier incident, Neuville is still back in 17th overall.

Latvala and Hirvonen are now nine seconds clear of the chasing pack overall, with Ostberg, Loeb and Solberg covered by just three seconds in their battle for third.

After briefly taking the lead earlier this morning, Ostberg said the nature of stages three and four had not been in his favour.

"I’m struggling with understeer. This was another field stage and the last one was the same," Ostberg explained.

"I haven’t tested in these conditions and it seems like the set-up doesn’t work. Now we’ll go back out in the forests on the nice stages again so hopefully we can take some time back."

Dani Sordo (MINI) and Evgeny Novikov (M-Sport Ford) are close behind the lead group in sixth and seventh, while a good time from Patrik Sandell moved the second MINI past Henning Solberg (Go Fast Energy Ford) and Eyvind Brynildsen (Adapta Ford) to eighth place overall.