Adrien Fourmaux appears to be out of Rally Portugal with damage to his Hyundai i20 N Rally1, becoming stuck in the middle of the road on the Arganil stage with broken suspension.
Hyundai teammates Ott Tänak and Adrien Fourmaux had been trading tenths of a second on the afternoon loop, with the pair separated by only 0.8s heading into stage eight.
But on a long uphill left-hander Fourmaux’s rally came to a sudden and confusing stop, his i20 suddenly spinning out after hooking a small ditch on the inside of the turn. In the process the front-left of his car sustained damage, leaving him stranded across the middle of the road.
Other cars were only just able to squeeze past on the inside of the stricken Hyundai, including Takamoto Katsuta who inherited second place.
“I had to slow down a bit there,” said Katsuta, who’d already overtaken teammate Sébastien Ogier for position on the prior test, Góis.
Tänak’s lead has been extended by Fourmaux’s demise but only to 3.5s, with Ogier a further 0.4s behind in third place.
Despite running second on the road Kalle Rovanperä has been able to stay in touch with the leaders, dropping only 1.6s further from Tänak over the three stages of Friday’s middle loop.
Thierry Neuville had started on the back foot with a spin on Friday’s first stage but was able to make amends on the second passes of the morning stages, going fastest on Arganil and taking fifth place from championship leader Elfyn Evans.
Being first on the road continued to create problems for Evans; he has now fallen to 16.5s behind Neuville, with junior Toyota driver Sami Pajari only 6.1s behind in seventh.
Grégoire Munster has overtaken M-Sport teammate Josh McErlean for eighth place, with WRC2 leader Oliver Solberg completing the top 10 behind McErlean.
Solberg’s class advantage is down to 8.7s after a spin on Lousã, coming in too hot to a long right-hander and overshooting the entry to a left hairpin immediately afterwards. Unfamiliar with the reverse selection mechanism on the GR Yaris Rally2, a car he switched to this year after several seasons with Škoda, Solberg struggled to get his car pointing the right way again and lost 16s.
