Sébastien Ogier leads Wales Rally GB, the penultimate round of the FIA World Rally Championship, but the Frenchman is being strongly challenged by Ott Tanak, the Estonian winning two of this morning’s stages to sit within 7.7 seconds of the reigning World Champion. After a slow start, Jari-Matti Latvala has moved up the leaderboard and the Finn heads four chasing rivals who are within 10 seconds of his provisional third position.

Rally GB is renowned for its wet and tricky conditions and, while drier this year due to running a couple of weeks earlier, a fine drizzle and foggy conditions greeted the crews for the first of two identical loops of four stages in the opening day.

Ogier set the pace in the opener, despite an intermittent problem with the windscreen wipers, and pulled out nearly eight seconds over Tanak in this single stage. He extended his advantage with another fastest time in the following stage but the Estonian fought back with wins in the next two to arrive at the tyre fitting zone in Newtown just 7.7 seconds adrift. Ogier is however distracted by a strange noise from the transmission and with team-mate Andreas Mikkelsen dropping 90 seconds with a broken front driveshaft in the fourth stage, the Frenchman potentially has cause for concern, especially as there are another four stages to run until the sanctuary of service back in Deeside.

Latvala had a cautious start and then lost time in a hairpin but has climbed from an early seventh to third after the first loop. He is now in the thick of a fight with Kris Meeke, Hayden Paddon, Craig Breen and Thierry Neuville, all of whom are within 10.2 seconds of the Finn. Meeke struggled for grip in the slippery conditions, team-mate Breen has had an up and down morning with some bad driving and Neuville suffered a spin, but the quartet are all battling hard ahead of what is expected to be a tougher afternoon on the repeated stages. 

Dani Sordo is eighth, the Spaniard never enjoying unpredictable conditions, and he is 20 seconds ahead of Mads Østberg who ran wide into the bushes in the final stage. Mikkelsen dropped from fourth after SS2 with a spin and then plummeted to 10th with the broken transmission. Stephane Lefebvre, returning after his accident in Rallye Deutschland, is 11th less than 10 seconds adrift.

In the FIA WRC 2 Championship, the fight between the main protagonists for the title is as intense as expected. Teemu Suninen took the early advantage but the Finnish Škoda driver was pushed hard by Esapekka Lappi and his fellow countryman overhauled him for the lead in stage three. They go into the second loop split by 8.6 seconds with Jan Kopecky further adrift in third. The Junior WRC/WRC 3 Championship contenders are also fighting hard in their two-wheel drive machinery. The Junior WRC Championship was provisionally sealed by Simone Tempestini in Corsica but the Italian is now looking to clinch the similar WRC 3 Championship title. He is second in the category behind Martin Koci.