Elfyn Evans will take a 7.7-second lead over Kalle Rovanperä into Saturday at Safari Rally Kenya, as Ott Tänak dropped back with a broken driveshaft.
Evans won the opening Kasarani superspecial stage, but Tänak took over the lead on SS2 and gradually began to extend it over the course of Friday.
At one stage his lead was more than 45s, but a driveshaft broke towards the end of the day and cost him well over a minute.
Driving the final stage of the day in just rear-wheel-drive, Tänak completed the leg still in third but now 55.4s off the rally lead.
Other than a rear-right puncture for Evans on SS10 – as well as the need to swap helmets with co-driver Scott Martin due to an intercom issue – and a costly half-spin for Rovanperä on SS4, the two Toyotas of Evans and Rovanperä were largely untroubled and completed the day without a hitch.
But Rovanperä is mounting the pressure on his championship-leading team-mate, gaining 8.8s over the day’s final two stages.
World champion Thierry Neuville is fourth but pegged back by two minutes worth of time penalties.
The first minute of those was earned by leaving morning service six minutes late due to a driveshaft and transmission change, before a further 10s were earned for a jump-start on SS5. Neuville then checked into SS8 five minutes later after clearing his air filter of fech-fech, thus earning the final 50s of penalties.
Overall, the Hyundai driver is 1m31.4s off the lead.
An under-the-weather Takamoto Katsuta completed Friday in fifth overall, surviving two punctures throughout the day, while team-mate Sami Pajari battled through one. The Toyotas are split by 52.7s on the leaderboard.
M-Sport Ford had a tricky day – Josh McErlean sixth but hampered by a squashed exhaust, forcing co-driver Eoin Treacy to shout the pacenotes to McErlean, while a catalogue of issues for Grégoire Munster, including a broken driveshaft and steering arm in the morning, left him down in 11th.
Adrien Fourmaux retired for the second day in succession – driving 10km on a front-right puncture on SS7 destroying his suspension.
Kajetan Kajetanowicz leads WRC2 on his first start in a Toyota GR Yaris Rally2, but has last year’s winner Gus Greensmith just 10.2s behind.
Jan Solans is third, but Oliver Solberg retired on the first stage of the afternoon after he bottomed out and got stuck in a deep section of fech-fech.
