The third stage of the day, covering 18.76km of Viana do Castelo brought with it the same challenges as the previous two stages, though thankfully fire wasn’t an issue the drivers needed to concern themselves with, unlike in the day’s first stage.
Volkswagen Motorsport’s Sebastien Ogier struggled massively with the deep gravel and unknown landscape, citing it as one of the worst stages he had ever driven. This is something that was echoed in the results after the morning’s stages, with Ogier left sitting in 7th overall.
Kris Meeke once again demonstrated his incredible pace by leading the stage for a short while, though it was short-lived, as he was beaten to the stage win by Jari-Matti Latvala, who finished in 11:38.3s.
Meeke was looking at a solid second position within the stage, until a modest Haydon Paddon, who completed the stage just 5.6s behind Latvala, which is an incredibly close 0.7s ahead of Meeke, knocked him down to third.
Ford’s Elfyn Evans, who was unable to complete the day’s opening stage, managed to regain some ground after a temporary repair to the throttle enabled him to complete the stage 7th fastest.
The morning’s dramatic and challenging stages will be remembered as not only the return to the north of the country, but also as some of the most gruelling and spectacular care of exposed rocks, thick dust, punctures and of course, the shocking occurrence of the 00 car being both stranded and engulfed in flames. Though the latter incident was only bad for the car, with the crew quickly escaping unscathed.
After all the morning’s excitement and challenges, the 2015 Vodafone Rally de Portugal now sees Volkswagen Motorsport’s Jari-Matti Latvala taking the lead, with an overall time of 44:57.1s, which puts him 6.1s over Citroen’s Kris Meeke. Andreas Mikkelsen, again in a Volkswagen Polo R WRC, resides in third place with a gap of 9.2s from his teammate. However, with so many position changes over the course of the morning, and gaps so small, everything could change again in the afternoon.
In WRC2 Karl Krudda leads in his Citroen DS3 R5, possibly thanks to driving like his grandmother, as he stated at the end of SS3. Though she drives fast, he quickly confirmed!
Nasser Al-Attiyah holds second place in WRC2 thanks to clean and consistent runs without taking too many risks. However, at the end of the morning’s stages, he said he’d like to use the service as an opportunity to stiffen the car up and make it a bit more precise.
Yazeed Al Rajhi completed the initial three stages with third position safely secured. Working hard in his Ford Fiesta, he ends the morning 19.1s ahead of the RC2 leader.