Mikko Hirvonen leads a round of the FIA World Rally Championship powered by Nokia in a Citroen for the first time after winning stage five and moving ahead of Jari-Matti Latvala’s Ford Fiesta RS WRC.
Hirvonen had moved onto Latvala’s tail by going quickest on the preceding stage, and he maintained that pace to win Finnskogen by 1.9 seconds and take a 2.9s overall lead.
"We are maybe finding a little bit of feeling with the car," smiled the Finn, who is still settling into the Citroen DS3 WRC. "It’s good, the stages are in surprisingly good condition and I enjoyed that one. I’m having a good time."
Latvala felt he was costing himself time with small errors, having only been fifth quickest on the stage.
"I’m not completely happy, I’m losing the rear and it’s making me angry because I can’t get clean runs - every stage I make little mistakes," he said. "I’m trying to get a balance with the driving. We’ll have a think about it at service and see if we can do anything."
Second quickest time for Mads Ostberg ensured his Adapta Ford stayed just ahead of Sebastien Loeb (Citroen) and Petter Solberg (Ford) in an extremely tight battle for third. The trio head for service covered by just 4.3s.
"It was a good stage for sure, we tried to push back here," said Ostberg, who had felt his set-up was not quite so good for the fields of the previous two stages and had been eager to return to forest roads.
"Hirvonen is going very well so it’s difficult to keep up with his pace. I didn’t want to take any risks - I’m sure I can give a little but more but then it’s not guaranteed I will finish."
Dani Sordo is also still in podium contention, hanging on behind that group in his MINI - 7.2s behind Solberg, and 8.7s ahead of Evgeny Novikov’s M-Sport Ford.