Zoom Pushing forward while others slow their pace

Today's leg took crews through six stages and 118 competitive kilometres of narrow asphalt roads between the towns of Enniskillen and Omagh. Just as tricky as leg one, rain made the afternoon's second passes especially challenging. In a change to the original schedule, the 27.76km Sloughan Glen section (SS11/14) was shortened by 6.81km.

The day started dry and cold, but rain showers set in by 0900hrs. By 1000hrs, heavy rain fell until midday, and returned during SS15. The temperature ranged from seven to eleven degrees Celsius.

After a solid and consistent performance on today's second leg of Rally Ireland, the Subaru World Rally Team pairing of Petter Solberg and Phil Mills consolidated their fifth place overall and narrowed the gap to fourth.

The team's other crew of Chris Atkinson and Stephane Prevot were fastest on stage 14 and set a string of top five stage times.

Today's six stages were just as treacherous, if not more so, than those of leg one. Heavy rain mid-morning cleaned the narrow routes but made the surface even greasier. The rain stopped before the afternoon loop, but drivers were still faced with standing water in the final three stages.

Petter started the day on heavily cut slicks, and despite the rain and driving to a pace with which he felt comfortable he steadily closed on fourth-placed Hirvonen (Ford). He posted the third-fastest stage time on SS 12 and SS 15 and was second-quickest on the day's final stage. The gap to Hirvonen was 30.3 seconds at the end of leg one, but by the end of the second day this had been halved.

Having slipped down the overall standings after an accident on leg one, Chris was the 17th car through the stages today, and had to contend with dirtier roads than those at the head of the field.

With his chances of a strong finish wiped out on leg one, Chris' focus was on testing and data acquisition – although he still managed to finish in the top five on four of the day's stages. His outright stage win on SS 14 demonstrated the pace of which he is capable on these unpredictable surfaces.

Sunday's final leg is the shortest of the event, with only four stages that stretch 60km. After the morning's loop of three stages to the east of the service park, there is a remote regroup before the spectacular final stage, Mullaghmore, which runs along a cliff edge overlooking Donegal Bay.