Sebastien Loeb reduced his Citroen team-mate Mikko Hirvonen’s Brother Rally New Zealand lead to just 1.5s as he set the fastest time on stage five, the repeat of the Te Hutewai stage.
With some predicting that stage five would be the least wet of the loop, Hirvonen’s position as first on the road had the potential to be costly as he cleared the loose surface from the top of the roads, but he only lost just over 2s to Loeb.
The world champion did not think there was a big cleaning effect yet, though, and was more concerned about how he would keep his soft tyres intact to the end of the day.
"I don’t know if it’s cleaning or not, but for sure it’s hard for the tyre," said Loeb. "It will not be easy on this loop. You can do nothing, you have to drive on softs in these conditions."
Third-placed Jari-Matti Latvala was also slightly quicker than Hirvonen, but remains 15s off the lead and said he was saving tyre life for later in the afternoon.
"I think we were losing a bit to Loeb, but we also need to think about the tyres," said Latvala. "The long stages are now more important."
Both Ford World Rally Team entries are now on soft tyres after Petter Solberg’s disastrous hard tyre choice this morning. The Norwegian was immediately on the pace following his tyre change at service, and has already reclaimed sixth from Thierry Neuville.
It was much closer straight away," said Solberg. "It was a very tough morning, I must say. Now I’ll try and get into the rhythm properly."
Evgeny Novikov and Ott Tanak are now into fourth and fifth again in the M-Sport Fords, while Super 2000 World Rally Championship leader Hayden Paddon dropped back outside the top 10 as WRC returnee Manfred Stohl got up to speed in Daniel Oliveira’s regular Ford.