Today’s route took the crews east of Porto for two identical loops of three stages covering 165.28 competitive kilometres. Meeke was again on the pace from the outset and the DS 3 WRC driver was fastest in all three tests to extend his advantage stage by stage. At the head of the field, Ogier struggled more today with the road sweeping effect but has otherwise run without problems. Dani Sordo held third going into the day, but the Spaniard was at a loss to explain dropping time in the opening stage and with the car moving around a lot, he lost more time in the following two stages and was overhauled by Mikkelsen in SS12, the longest stage of the rally. The pair are now split by 4.9 seconds going into the repeated runs this afternoon.

Eric Camilli has had a great morning, upping the pace considerably and the Frenchman now holds fifth, his team-mate Mads Østberg losing time with a broken driveshaft. He is seventh. Splitting the Fiesta WRC crews is Jari-Matti Latvala climbing from an overnight ninth after yesterday’s power steering problems.

Sweden’s Pontus Tidemand continues to lead the FIA WRC 2 Championship category and, following the retirement of Thierry Neuville (fuel) and Stephane Lefebvre (suspension), the Skoda Fabia R5 driver has now moved up the overall leaderboard into eighth. Martin Prokop is ninth and Nicolas Fuchs rounds off the top 10.