Saturday morning - Meeke continues to dominate

The first loop of stages on Saturday, the third day of competition on this year’s Vodafone Rally de Portugal saw Kris Meeke continue to dominate the event, winning all three of the stages and extend his lead to more than a minute over the reigning champion, Sebastien Ogier.

Meeke, admittedly benefitting from his road position and cleaner conditions with more grip, was the fastest man on the stages and increased his margin to 1m02.9s over Ogier.

However, the story of the morning was the huge push that Ogier’s team-mate, Andreas Mikkelsen was on. He had been given a go-ahead from the team boss at the end of the previous day and was on the hunt for Dani Sordo and third place overall. He capitalised on the conditions as the Spaniard struggled for grip with the rear of his Hyundai, eventually climbing past him on the last stage of the morning, to return to the service area at Matosinhos in third place, with a margin of 4.9s.

Jari-Matti Latvala was also on a charge, trying to reclaim the time lost yesterday with power steering failure. He climbed from eighth to sixth, thanks to Thierry Neuville’s retirement after running out of fuel and Mads Ostberg’s lack of drive on the rear of his Fiesta.

Eric Camilli was putting in a string of excellent stage times throughout the morning, to hold fifth overall as the crews head for the mid-day service.

In WRC2, Elfyn Evans was more at home in his Fiesta, having made changes to the car overnight and was taking the fight to Pontus Tidemand. However, he rolled on the final stage of the morning and into retirement, giving Nicolas Fuchs a clear second place in the category, more than 1m22s back.