MOTOR SPORT/Swedish WRC Rally:Marcus Gronholm cut Sebastien Loeb's World Rally Championship lead to two points with a start to finish victory in the Swedish Rally, their second successive success following last weekend's Galway International win. Finland's Gronholm eased off on the final day but the Ford driver, who took control of the event halfway through the opening day, still had enough in hand to win comfortably from his French rival.
Gronholm was happy with the way the event went as he held a comfortable lead of 53.8 seconds over Loeb's Citroen at the end.
But despite cruising to his first win of the season and his fifth in eight years in Sweden to make it 26 career victories in all, Gronholm found reason to complain.
He said: "I guess the worst thing was that it was pretty cold." He added: "It was a good weekend. I was okay, the car has been okay, everything was perfect."
Title holder and triple world champion Loeb was happy with the way the new Citroen C4 had performed on snow.
Loeb said: "For me it was a great race. To finish second behind Marcus is a great result and I was happy to see the car was so fast.
"It's a good result for the championship. It's only two points (Loeb's championship lead) but it looks like it will be a good fight with Marcus again this year."
Finland's Mikko Hirvonen made it two Fords in the top three as he overcame power steering problems on Friday to beat another Ford, the Stobart Motorsport-run machine of Henning Solberg, by half a minute.
Petter Solberg's crash while lying third on Saturday had left team-mate Chris Atkinson driving the only remaining Subaru but the Australian threw away fifth place when he clipped a snow bank two stages from the end of the rally and his car suffered damage to its suspension and driveshaft.
Despite the damage, Atkinson only lost two minutes and three places as a result.
Daniel Carlsson made the most of Atkinson's misfortune to take the Kronos Citroen up to fifth to finish as the top home driver on the event for the second year running.
Finland's Toni Gardemeister - who led after the rally's opening stage in his Mitsubishi - climbed up to sixth, while Manfred Stohl fought off brake problems on the second day to finish seventh in the other Kronos Citroen.
The top 10 was completed by 19-year-old Mads Ostberg who was ninth in the Adapta Subaru which was his best world rally finish, and Skoda privateer Jan Kopecky.
Stobart Ford duo Matt Wilson and Matti Latvala both retired after oil cooling pipes on their cars froze overnight, causing the engines to overheat.
Both cars were pulled out of the rally rather than risk further damage as all teams have to use the same cars and components for next weekend's Rally Norway.
RALLY OF SWEDEN: Final overall positions: 1 Marcus Gronholm (Fin) Ford 3hrs 08mins 40.700secs; 2 Sebastien Loeb (Fra) Citroen 3:09:34.500; 3 Mikko Hirvonen (Fin) Ford 3:10:22.200; 4 Henning Solberg (Nor) Ford 3:10:50.500; 5 Daniel Carlsson (Swe) Citroen 3:12:18.500.
Standings Driver: 1 Sebastien Loeb (Fra) Citroen 18pts; 2 Marcus Gronholm (Fin) Ford 16; 3 Mikko Hirvonen (Fin) Ford 10.
