Thierry Neuville pressed home his advantage on Rallye Monte-Carlo with yet another fastest time to extend his lead over Elfyn Evans to 11.1 seconds, as Evans came under pressure from Sébastien Ogier.
There has been absolutely no let-up from Neuville who stole the lead from Evans on the first pass of La Bollène-Vésubie / Peïra Cava that opened proceedings on Sunday.
On the repeat run, Neuville scored his fifth consecutive scratch time and eighth in total to stretch his advantage into double figures with just the powerstage remaining.
“I had a good stage. I did the maximum,” said Neuville, who is now on the brink of a 13th WRC victory.
Ogier had a comparatively strong run to team-mate Evans as he lost just 1.4s to Neuville. Evans chucked away 7.1s and was beaten on the stage by M-Sport’s fourth-placed Finn Esapekka Lappi.
“That didn’t feel like such a bad run but obviously the time is not so good, so I’m not 100% sure why,” Evans pondered.
Ogier was happier having found a bit more confidence in his Toyota. He is just 1.5s behind his team-mate now in third.
“For sure with that kind of gap [to Neuville] it’s [the win] not really possible but we keep trying,” he said.
“At least we found a bit of a rhythm and the confidence is better in the car.”
Sébastien Loeb ran into strife on the previous La Cabanette / Col de Braus test when he outbraked himself and momentarily beached his Hyundai i20 WRC before spectators helped him back on his way.
This appeared to hamper him on the penultimate stage of the rally too as he slipped behind Kalle Rovanperä into sixth with a time 55.4s slower than stage winner Neuville.
The reason? “I had one tire completely destroyed on the stage before so on that I lost a bit the braking, so now we have to save the tire to finish the rally so for that I was very slow,” was the reply.
Takamoto Katsuta had his eyes on gaining experience in seventh while Teemu Suninen continued his charge up the leaderboard. The M-Sport driver is now incredibly close to WRC3 leader Eric Camilli’s eighth place.
Mads Ostberg holds a relaxed lead in WRC2 in his Citroën after Hyundai rival Ole Christian Veiby crashed on the previous test.
Leading positions after SS15
1 Neuville (Hyundai)
2 Evans (Toyota) +11.1s
3 Ogier (Toyota) +12.6s
4 Lappi (M-Sport Ford) +3m02.8s
5 Rovanperä (Toyota) +4m04.8s
6 Loeb (Hyundai) +4m08.6s
7 Katsuta (Toyota) +11m12.9s
8 Camilli (Citroën) +13m09.1s
9 Suninen (M-Sport Ford) +13m28.3s
10 Ostberg (Citroën) +13m51.8s
