It’s Ogier versus Solberg in Japan

With just a handful of forest stages and two final runs over the Sapporo Dome superspecial left, it’s still impossible to predict a winner on Rally Japan.

However, it’s easier to tell who it’s not going to be.

Mikko Hirvonen picked up a mechanical problem at the start of the day that was initially reported as a differential pump failure, which cost him more than half a minute - dropping him from second to fifth.

“What we’ve got is a small gearbox problem,” explained Hirvonen. “It’s not so bad on the stages that are quite fast, where you can keep it flat but on the twisty stages, we lose a lot of time as we have to use the manual gearshift.”

There is no service halt between the eight consecutive stages that make up the final day of the Rally Japan, meaning that Hirvonen will struggle to defend his fifth place from six-time World Champion Sebastien Loeb, now right behind him after two stage wins from the opening three stages.

Citroen privateer Petter Solberg started the day with a 3.7-second lead but was beaten by Sebastien Ogier’s factory C4 WRC on the first three stages, which moved ahead after SS20.

After SS22, Ogier held a 4.6sec lead over Solberg and victory is set to be fought out between the two of them. The Norwegian must be bitterly regretting the 10-second jump-start penalty he picked up yesterday, but he has vowed to keep pushing hard to the finish, although he is inevitably losing time by running first on the road.

“That’s not something I’m really thinking about,” said Solberg. “I don’t really believe in playing games: we’re just going flat-out everywhere. It doesn’t matter.”

Ogier found the stages more slippery than he expected, even running behind Solberg but he is enjoying the battle on his first visit to Japan in a World Rally Car.

The battle for third between Citroen’s Dani Sordo and Ford driver Jari-Matti Latvala has slipped back a bit from the leading duo, more than 20 seconds behind Ogier and Solberg.

Sordo was slightly quicker than Latvala out of the blocks on the final day, but the Finn was not entirely satisfied with his driving. “It wasn’t a fantastic feeling, but I hope we can go better this afternoon,” he said. “Most of all I feel sorry for Mikko: he’s been really unlucky to have a problem.”

Loeb has Hirvonen firmly in his sights, although the curiously muted Frenchman is still not happy with the set-up of his Citroen despite setting two fastest stage times this morning. “We changed the differential last night but it was actually worse,” said Loeb. “We’re getting a lot of understeer.”

The first stage of the morning accounted for Kimi Raikkonen, who slithered off and got stuck after mishearing a pace note. His Citroen was undamaged but there were no spectators to help him regain the road, forcing the 2007 Formula One World Champion’s retirement.

This promoted Ford Fiesta Jari Ketomaa, leading the S-WRC by 45 seconds from Martin Prokop, to ninth overall while Subaru driver Patrik Flodin leads the P-WRC standings in 11th overall.