Northern Ireland's Kris Meeke and Ireland's Paul Nagle moved into second position in the overall standings at Rally Finland during Friday’s long leg.
After a long prologue over close to sixty kilometres yesterday, the leg featured nine stages in total. The crews set off in the same order as the World Championship standings.
Lying third as the action got underway this morning, Meeke set off at the same pace as on day one. After a stage win on Kakaristo 1 (SS7) and an impressive series of performances, he managed to move ahead of Sébastien Ogier into second place, whilst remaining in touch with the overall leader, Jari-Matti Latvala.
Meanwhile, Mads Østberg first of all got the better of Juho Hänninen in the morning, before entering into a three-way scrap for fourth. He ended the day fifth overall, just 1.2 seconds adrift of fourth-placed Andreas Mikkelsen but ahead of Mikko Hirvonen in sixth.
In the WRC2, Sébastien Chardonnet and Thibault De la Haye recorded the first stage win of a Citroën DS3 R5 in the category, returning to Jyväskylä this evening in third place.
Leader since the start of the rally, Martin Koci controlled from the front in the Junior WRC. Simone Tempestini and Quentin Giordano completed the top three of Citroën DS3 R3s.
Saturday’s leg features ten stages, over 130 kilometres, on some of Rally Finland’s best-known roads. The cars are due to leave Parc Ferme at 7.00am, returning to the service park at 1.57pm and concluding the leg at 9.51pm.
