Sébastien Ogier has moved ahead of Mārtiņš Sesks into second place of Rally Latvia, despite a wild off-road moment towards the end of SS11.
Ogier started Saturday’s third stage 3.5 seconds adrift of home hero Sesks who is making his full Rally1 hybrid debut this weekend.
The eight-time world champion was faster than Sesks on SS9 before the Latvian hit back on SS10. But Ogier finally got his man on the Īvande test, beating the M-Sport driver by 3.7s to move ahead by just 0.2s.
However it could so easily have been so different for Ogier, who ran wide on the final corner of the stage and ran into a ditch on the left before popping back out onto the road.
There were no such concerns for rally leader Kalle Rovanperä, whose rally lead has now stretched beyond the half-minute mark to 33.4s, although he did concede his first stage win of the day to a charging Ott Tänak.
While Thierry Neuville remains rooted in eighth place, comfortably ahead of Grégoire Munster and Esapekka Lappi but too far behind those ahead of him, his two title rivals have been making important moves on the leaderboard.
Tänak had closed to within just half a second of fourth-placed Takamoto Katsuta after the first pair of Saturday stages and pounced on SS11 to nip ahead by 2.2s.
However there is a suggestion that his Hyundai was suffering from a reoccurrence of the brake issue that plagued him towards the end of Friday afternoon.
Elfyn Evans hasn’t made up a place but is harrying M-Sport’s Adrien Fourmaux for sixth place – a position that would also be worth two points for Evans.
Fourmaux had hoped to be a factor in the fight for fourth, but instead has slipped into the clutches of Evans. Halfway through Saturday morning, the gap between the pair stood at an even seven seconds and Evans continued to chip away at his rival on SS11 – nibbling another 1.1s away from Fourmaux.
Overall, that leaves Evans 5.9s adrift of the Frenchman.
