Sebastien Ogier did what he does best on the middle stage of the afternoon’s loop of three. He piled the pressure on while managing his tyres to extend his lead and make sure that he had a good set of tyres for the second run of the event’s longest stage, which follows this one.
The Frenchman was 4.5 seconds faster over the 22.3Km than Thierry Neuville, who was trying to push to close the gap. However, the M-Sport driver is a master in these conditions and stretched his overall lead to 23 seconds in the process.
Neuville was second-fastest to also extend his margin over Hyundai team-mate Dani Sordo to 12.5 seconds, the Spaniard trying hard to stay in touch. Third-fastest was Jari-Matti Latvala, the Finn clearly feeling better after starting the day with a fever while Toyota team-mate Esapekka Lappi, competing in a World Rally car for the first time, was fifth.
Separating the two Toyota drivers was Ott Tanak, having lost some of his motivation after dropping time in the morning with suspension damage.
In WRC2, Teemu Suninen was fastest, ahead of Andreas Mikkelsen, with Pontus Tidemund third. As a result, Suninen and Tidemund swapped places again overall, with Suninen climbing to second in the category.