Just 0.1s covers the top three cars in the Rally Australia going into the final day after Dani Sordo took the lead during Saturday evening's superspecials.

Sordo and Citroen team-mate Sebastien Loeb had deliberately slowed on the last full length stage of the day to drop behind Ford's Mikko Hirvonen and ensure that it was the Finn who will have to clear the loose gravel from the stage surfaces tomorrow morning.
"We had to do it," confirmed the Frenchman. "I would have had no chance [to win] clearing the road. It's not something I like, but the regulations force us to use this sort of strategy."

However, Hirvonen lost P1 right at the end of the leg, when he was 'passed' by Sordo following the two Tweed super specials. He now trails the Spaniard by just 0.1 seconds, and remarkably, so too does Loeb.
"It's so close, it is incredible," said Hirvonen. "The final leg is the longest of the rally, which is good because it means there are a lot of kilometres in which to fight for the win. I tried to push as hard as possible this afternoon, but I tried too hard because I made some small mistakes."
"I didn't want to be first on the road tomorrow but there was nothing I could do about it and it will be tough trying to win from that position if conditions are dry. However, if it is wet, it could be perfect."

But while the positions after SS23 set the Sunday running order, two runs through the Tweed superspecial on the streets of Murwillumbah still remained.
Hirvonen has struggled on the short asphalt stage all weekend, and he was again outpaced by the two Citroens this evening, with Sordo moving into the rally lead by 0.1s over Loeb and Hirvonen - who are tied for second.

Citroen Junior's Sebastien Ogier won both runs around Murwillumbah and in the process closed to within 1.8s of Jari-Matti Latvala (Ford) in their battle for fourth.

Of the rest, Henning Solberg is sixth, but he had a torrid day and was lucky to be able to continue after going into a ditch in SS17.
His windscreen was smashed in the incident and in addition to his car suffering bodywork damage, he also injured his thumb.

Henning lies over 2.5 minutes off the front runners and almost 2 minutes off the battle for fourth. His woes have also allowed Matthew Wilson to close right up in the sister Stobart Ford car and post-SS25 just 0.8 seconds splits them.

"It's been a difficult day for us," Henning reflected. "Obviously we had our problems this morning when we slid off at high speed which was a big surprise to me. We just hit the mud and away it went. When we were sliding off I caught my thumb in the steering wheel and the swelling has been getting worse since then; the pain on the last few stages today was really bad.

"I'm trying to get a good setting on the car and tomorrow we will try with a set-up that we used at Rally Finland. I'm still in sixth place and if any of the guys in front of me make a mistake then I could get up into the top five which would be a good result."

Federico Villagra completes the points' scorers in a lonely eighth, a minute further back and over 5 minutes up on Hayden Paddon's Mitsubishi. Martin Prokop rounds out the top ten and he also holds the lead in the Production Car World Rally Championship category.

Prokop had been behind Richard Mason, but he moved back in front in SS17 and ended the day 18.3 seconds ahead. Cody Crocker completes the P-WRC top-three, followed by Toshi Arai and Armindo Araujo.