Radstrom reels in Rovanpera.

Thomas Radstrom has powered into second position after the group of two stages totalling 49 competitive kilometres. The Mitsubishi Carisma GT driver is now just 7.7 seconds adrift of the new leader of the Swedish Rally, Peugeot's Harri Rovanpera.

"Everything is very enjoyable and it's good to be fighting, but we really have to concentrate", commented co-driver Tina Thorner. "Thomas is making a good performance, but we were really really lucky on stage 7. I think 'HE' was with us and that's why we got away with it! The support from the home crowd is incredible, but we're just concentrating on driving well and not worrying about tactics at the moment."

Team-mates Tommi Makinen and Risto Mannisenmaki moved up into second position after the first and longer of these stages, the 34.07 kilometre Fredriksberg stage. Despite then dropping back to third after stage 10, the Finns are still inching closer to the lead in what is turning into a frantic four-way battle at the top of a leaderboard dominated by three Scandinavians.

"We lost a bit of time on the last stage going off twice into snowbanks, but otherwise no big problems. There's still many kilometres to go, so we will see what happens", added the Lancer Evolution driver.

Freddy Loix and Sven Smeets have now moved up into 17th position, a revised set-up aiding their charge in the last stage. "We made the set-up softer between the two stages and on the last one we were only 2 seconds off Tommi, which was good", said Freddy.

The sun is now beginning to set and the last two stages will run in near darkness and plunging temperatures. The crews contest a repeat of this morning's 27.79 kilometre Nyhammar stage first, and then the famous two kilometre Lugnet stage where traditionally 20,000 spectators come to witness the fast and furious action.