Ott Tänak continues to lead a Toyota 1-2-3 on Rally Portugal, but team-mate Jari-Matti Latvala closed the gap to just 5.1 seconds over the course of Saturday morning.

The longest day of the rally began with a loop of three stages in the Cabreira mountain range to the North-East of the service park in Matosinhos.

Tänak faced an early scare when he experienced a brake issue on the opening test, and saw his lead over Latvala drop from 17.3s to 11.3s, while stage-winner Kris Meeke moved to within 2.5s of Latvala.

Although Tänak was able to make repairs on the road section between stages, Latvala continued to close in by winning both SS9 and SS10. With rising temperatures, abrasive roads and the longest stages of the rally on today’s itinerary, the Finn appeared to benefit from choosing a mixture of medium and hard tyres while all his main rivals opted for only mediums compound tyres.

After his early progression, Meeke is now 13.3s behind Latvala and just 5.3s in front of Thierry Neuville.

Hyundai driver Neuville and Citroën’s Sébastien Ogier were in a close duel all morning. Ogier moved past on SS9, only for Neuville to regain the spot on SS10, ending the morning 1.9s ahead. Neuville benefited from a team’s tactic, with his team-mates Dani Sordo and Sébastien Loeb checking in late before SS8 and SS10 respectively to run inbetween Ogier and Neuville in the road order.

Esapekka Lappi moved up from eighth to sixth, passing WRC debutant Gus Greensmith in SS9 and then Teemu Suninen in SS10, when the Finnish M-Sport driver faced a loss of power on his Ford Fiesta. Elfyn Evans moved back up into the top 10 in ninth overall after the sensor issue he had on Friday.

Delayed by a puncture on the opening day, Kalle Rovanperä regained the FIA WRC 2 Pro lead from his Škoda team-mate Jan Kopecký on SS8 and is back in the top 10 overall.

Ole Christian Veiby however suffered misfortune in the last stage of the morning. The Norwegian had been extending his FIA WRC 2 lead when his Volkswagen Polo GTI R5 caught fire in SS10. Both he and co-driver Jonas Andersson escaped unharmed. Having twice exchanged second place during the morning, Russia’s Nikolay Gryazin and France’s Pierre-Louis Loubet both had to stop during SS10, promoting Japan’s Takamoto Katsuta into the class lead.