Wales WRC: Ogier pulls out big lead as Latvala falls back

Sebastien Ogier stretched his Wales Rally GB lead on Friday afternoon after taking three more stage wins, with nearest rival Ott Tanak falling back to 37 seconds behind the Frenchman.Having begun the afternoon loop with 7.7s in hand over Tanak, Ogier doubled his advantage in SS5, the 31.82km Myherin 2 test, before going on to eke out more time over the Estonian in SS6 and SS7.

The start of SS8 was delayed by around half an hour, but it when it finally got underway, Ogier’s streak ended as he was beaten by the Hyundai of Thierry Neuville by a scant seven tenths.

But with Tanak losing another 14.7 seconds, Ogier – despite fearing a broken driveshaft on his Polo R WRC – now leads the way by 37.3 seconds heading into Saturday’s stages.

Said Ogier: “I’m really happy that the day is finished because I think the driveshaft has just broken in there.

“It’s definitely something we need to work on, because three cars suffering the same problem in the same day has never happened before,” he added, referring to the issues of Andreas Mikkelsen and Jari-Matti Latvala.

The latter began the afternoon third overall, but began to haemorrhage time on SS7.