Jari-Matti Latvala took another stage win on stage 15 of Rally Sweden, but was only 0.1 seconds faster than his rival for victory, Mikko Hirvonen.
Though there has been little to choose between the duo all weekend, their near-inseparable times on Vargasen made things took their closeness to another level.
Both men said they had been taking it easy to conserve tyres for a charge later in the day.
"I tried to save my tyres," said Ford driver Latvala. "I was a little bit worried as there was so much gravel on the road not to destroy the tyres. I preferred to back off a bit."
Hirvonen had adopted a similar plan.
"It went really well, and I tried to be sensible with the tyres as well, so let’s see how it’s going to go overall," said the Citroen man.
The ultra-tense battle for third place closed up a little more on stage 15, as Mads Ostberg (Adapta Ford) trimmed another seven tenths of a second from factory Ford Fiesta RS WRC driver Petter Solberg’s advantage, getting the gap down to 6.5s.
Sebastien Loeb’s comeback charge has also taken a step forward, as he beat sixth-placed Henning Solberg by 11.5s on the stage to close to within just half a second in the overall standings. Evgeny Novikov, 44s in front of Solberg, will be the champion’s next target.
In the best of the MINIs, Patrik Sandell has continued to pull away from Martin Prokop’s Czech National Ford and make his eighth place more secure.