Petter Solberg continues to lead the Acropolis Rally, but his advantage has been reduced from nearly a minute to just 5.4 seconds in the space of three stages.
The Norweigan had hoped that charging into a big lead on Friday would give him enough of a cushion to hang on when running first on the dusty roads today. But the three cars behind were able to tear into Solberg's cushion this morning, with Citroen's Sebastien Ogier winning all three stages to come from fourth – 57sec down on Solberg – to second, just 5.4sec adrift. Solberg lost 10sec overshooting a junction on SS8, but otherwise his lack of pace was purely down to stage conditions.
Ogier's teammate Sebastien Loeb and Ford's Mikko Hirvonen have also closed in, and are now 15sec and 23.8sec off the lead respectively.
Despite brake issues this morning, Henning Solberg remains fifth ahead of his Stobart Ford teammate Matthew Wilson.
Kimi Raikkonen has moved up to seventh after Ott Tanak rolled out of the S2000 lead and seventh overall, and Jari-Matti Latvala's Ford developed a turbo problem that left him limping through the stages. The Finn is now 13 minutes away from the lead.
Leading positions after SS9:
Pos Driver Team/Car Time/Gap
1. Petter Solberg Solberg Citroen 2h24m09.4s
2. Sebastien Ogier Citroen + 5.4s
3. Sebastien Loeb Citroen + 15.0s
4. Mikko Hirvonen Ford + 23.8s
5. Henning Solberg Stobart Ford + 2m44.7s
6. Matthew Wilson Stobart Ford + 3m26.0s
7. Kimi Raikkonen Ice 1 Citroen + 4m57.2s
8. Juho Hanninen Red Bull Skoda + 5m35.5s
9. Bernardo Sousa Quinta Ford + 7m57.6s
10. Dennis Kuipers FERM Ford + 8m44.8s