Finland’s Marcus Grönholm continues to dominate Wales Rally GB, the final round of the 2006 FIA World Rally Championship. The Ford driver now holds a one minute 18.8 second advantage going into the final four stages on Sunday. Austrian Peugeot 307 WRC driver Manfred Stohl has climbed one place up the leaderboard into second with Petter Solberg slipping to third overnight after going off the road earlier in the day and then breaking the steering this afternoon.

Grönholm started the day with a 25.8 second advantage over Petter Solberg but extended his lead when the Norwegian lost half a minute in the first stage, understeer sending him off the road. Manfred Stohl claimed the position but a hard-chasing Solberg overhauled his rival to climb back into second by the penultimate stage. However, Solberg then lost out again to the Austrian when he hit a gate post, broke the steering and lost another 55 seconds. He is now more than two minutes adrift of Grönholm, with little hope of claiming a victory for Subaru for the first time in over a year.

Behind the top three, Xavier Pons has climbed from sixth to fourth in the lead Citroën Xsara WRC, the Spaniard edging out Finland’s Jari-Matti Latvala, who is driving the 2006 specification Focus for the first time in his career. Subaru’s Chris Atkinson rounds off the top six.

The closing leg of the FIA World Rally Championship takes in just four stages but 112 competitive kilometres in the Welsh forests. Ironically, should Grönholm win Wales Rally GB he will finish the series just one point adrift of the newly-crowned FIA World Rally Champion Sébastien Loeb*. But for his roll in Rally Australia just two events ago, the Finn could well have claimed the title in Wales tomorrow.

Wales Rally GB - Results after Leg 2

1	Marcus Grönholm/Timo Rautiainen	Ford Focus RS WRC	2 hr 13 min 55.6sec
2	Manfred Stohl/Ilka Minor	Peugeot 307 WRC	2 hr 15 min 14.4sec
3	Petter Solberg/Phil Mills	Subaru Impreza WRC	2 hr 16 min 04.3sec
4	Xavier Pons/Carlos Del Barrio	Citroën Xsara WRC	2 hr 16 min 26.5sec
5	Jari-Matti Latvala/Miikka Anttila	Ford Focus RS WRC	2 hr 16 min 30.9sec
6	Chris Atkinson/Glen Macneall	Subaru Impreza WRC	2 hr 17 min 21.5sec

 
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* Subject to the official publication of the results by the FIA