Pierre Louis Loubet was the only leading retirement on Friday who failed to restart on Saturday morning.
Seven special stages were on offer on day two, starting with the 20.64km of Vieira da Minho to the north-east of Porto, and the dubious honour of running first on the road and sweeping the stage surfaces was given to Neuville, Fourmaux and Greensmith.
Neuville opted to run four hard compound tyres to conserve his softs for an attack at Sunday’s Wolf Power Stage and he posted a modest target time of 13min 21.1sec. A sticking throttle cost Fourmaux at least 15 seconds but a flying Greensmith posted a 12min 53.6sec in his quest for a maiden fastest stage time on a WRC rally.
Ogier pipped the Briton by four-tenths of a second and moved in front of Katsuta to take fourth place.
Sordo lost his way in the pace notes, but still maintained third place, as a flying Tänak set the fastest time by 7.5 seconds to extend his lead over Evans to 13.5. “I had a good feeling in the stage,” said the Estonian. “I am much more happy with the car today. It felt much more natural.”
Lappi extended his advantage over Gryazin to 18.1 seconds in WRC2 after a disappointing time for the Russian (turbo and tyre issues) on the opener. Suninen also moved ahead of the troubled Gryazin and into second.