KEY POINTS:
The Waikato weather threw everything it could at competitors yesterday but it couldn't beat Marcus Gronholm, who will take a commanding lead into the final day of the Rally of New Zealand.
The ice-cool Finn has led from Friday's opening stage and takes a 50.3-second led over fellow Finn and Ford team-mate Mikko Hirvonen, with Peugeot's Manfred Stohl a further 2m 6s back in third.
Although the world championship is gone, with the injured Sebastian Loeb already crowned champion, Gronholm is in touch with a record-equalling fourth New Zealand title.
He won three of the day's six special stages - with Hirvonen claiming another - and they are in a powerful position to secure the three points they need to claim the manufacturer's championship for Ford.
"It was a really wet morning and the stages weren't enjoyable to drive in those conditions, but there was no panic," Gronholm said. "We weren't under severe pressure and not having to drive flat out, so it wasn't a big problem. But I have never seen mud like that.
"I'm happy with the way the day has gone and it's great to have Mikko up there at the top with me. I'm thinking about the finish and getting there without doing anything stupid."
It was a sentiment shared by Hirvonen, who got a little wetter than he would have liked yesterday morning. "There was so much rain that we had a lot of water coming in through the roof," he explained. "I couldn't see properly for the final 10km of the last stage because the windscreen was misted."
The two Fords had largely incident-free days compared with some yesterday. It was inevitable there would be crashes and carnage.
The biggest casualty was Australian Chris Atkinson, who is out after hitting a rock and damaging his suspension. Atkinson won two of the morning stages to sit comfortably in eighth before his mishap.
He wasn't the only one. The day's third stage, and eighth of the race, saw Kiwis Chris West and Emma Gilmour retire from the race, along with PWRC contender Fumio Nutahara. West clipped the inside of a corner and sustained too much damage to his car to continue, and Pole Leszek Kuzaj slid down a bank when trying to navigate, slowly around West's stationary car.
Faced with the prospect of dropping off a sheer cliff, Dermott Malley forced his Mitsubishi into a bank when he realised his brakes had failed.
"I took the option of the bank and rolling it rather than going down 300ft," Malley said casually, belying the seriousness of his predicament.
It was a better day for Richard Mason, the first Kiwi on the road, who lies in 10th overall and third in the second-tier PWRC class.
Kirsty Nelson, the youngest driver in the rally at 16 and who is contemplating a maths exam on Wednesday, is 32nd of the 42 starters.
The drivers head to the famous Whaanga Coast today. By then, Gronholm might even have enough time to take in some sightseeing before returning to Mystery Creek to celebrate another Rally of New Zealand win.
