Ott Tänak has set a blistering pace over Saturday morning’s loop of Rally Finland stages and the Estonian arrived back at the mid-leg service 23.7 seconds ahead of Mads Østberg. He won all four of the forest stages, blitzing the entire field as he fights for his first win in the spiritual home of rallying. Østberg has also maintained a hot pace and is a comfortable 20.9 seconds ahead of the second Toyota of Jari-Matti Latvala.

Today’s route, around Jämsä, is a big day covering nearly 143 competitive kilometres over two loops of four stages spanning a 16-hour period. Tänak, starting the day with just 5.8 seconds in hand to Østberg, admitted to pushing to the limit yesterday and despite going 8.5 seconds faster than anyone else in the opener, claimed to be watching the pace of his rivals before taking any risks. By the end of the loop he was still driving to his own rhythm but continued to pull out handfuls of seconds over the rest of the field. Østberg, with a useful advantage over Latvala, has also not been pushing to the maximum, even though the Finn has been keeping up the fight to close the gap on the Norwegian.

Hayden Paddon remains fourth in the lead Hyundai i20 Coupe WRC despite struggling with some small technical issues over the morning stages. It is however Esapekka Lappi who is charging through the field, the young Finn in the third Yaris WRC climbing from eighth last night to fifth. He slid wide and hit a bank in the second stage and admitted his pace notes were not precise enough, but he overhauled three rivals, including reigning FIA World Rally Champion Sebastien Ogier, to get within striking distance of fourth overall. Teemu Suninen is however still hot on his heels just 3.7 seconds further adrift in sixth, although the Finn seems unable to dig deeper. Fiesta WRCs also hold seventh and eighth in the hands of Ogier and Elfyn Evans. The Frenchman made a number of changes to the set-up last night and just hasn’t found the confidence; he started sixth this morning and immediately fell to eighth in one stage alone. He managed to overhaul Evans in the third stage when the Welshman suffered a lot of oversteer but is now nearly two minutes off Tänak’s potential rally-winning pace mid-way through the event. Evans was lucky to get away with a big moment in the second stage and is holding station with his team-mate, the pair split by 1.9 seconds going into the repeated stages this afternoon. Craig Breen continues to hold ninth despite a couple of mistakes and he is well ahead of Thierry Neuville, the Belgian at least happier to have one car running ahead of him today and doubtless relieved that Ogier, his main Championship rival, has dropped back too.

Kalle Rovanperä continues to set the pace in the FIA WRC 2 Championship, the 17-year-old Škoda driver winning three of the four stages to pull out a 51.4 second lead over Eerik Pietarinen. Jari Huttunen is third and Ole Christian Veiby is fourth, steadily recovering from yesterday’s time loss. Ken Torn holds a 15.1 second advantage over Emil Bergkvist in the FIA Junior and WRC 3 Championships, the Estonian winning one of the stages to his Swedish rival’s three.