Sébastien Ogier lost over 30 seconds on the second stage of Rally del Paraguay after picking up a rear-right puncture.
The eight-time world champion was second fastest on the opening test, 3.2s down on Toyota team-mate Kalle Rovanperä.
But Ogier has now dropped to eighth after losing half a minute with a destroyed rear-right tire.
Ogier explained: “Lot of rocks, middle of the road on a straight line but that’s how it is.”
Like his team-mate Takamoto Katsuta, Ogier now has no spare tires for the rest of the morning loop.
Out front, Rovanperä’s lead has been trimmed to just 0.4s after Adrien Fourmaux won SS2 by 4.3s.
“There is no jumps in that stage so it’s easier to have normal driving!” Fourmaux smiled. “I was trying to be really clean.”
Sami Pajari had been level with Fourmaux after SS1 but is now 4.6s back and 5.0s off the lead in third.
Ott Tänak is fourth ahead of Elfyn Evans and Thierry Neuville, who’s not enjoying his first taste of Rally del Paraguay.
“It’s a nightmare, I’m struggling like hell,” said the world champion. “I have so many diff openings, I don’t know what to do to be honest. It’s not fun.”
Grégoire Munster meanwhile remains in the rally, despite stopping 900m onto SS1 to repair the front-right of his Ford Puma Rally1.
He lost 40 minutes on the stage and incurred a further 40s penalty for arriving to SS2 four minutes late. He completed that stage without rear brakes, suffered an overshoot and then lost pressure in his rear-right tire towards the end of the stage to boot.
“I don’t know if it was something missing in our pacenotes or a rock that was pulled out but it broke a steering arm and the brakes,” Munster explained. “Very sorry for the team, I think we could have done something special in Paraguay so very sorry to the team.”
