M-Sport Ford’s Elfyn Evans has retaken the lead of the Tour de Corse, restoring a top position he briefly held in this morning’s battle with Toyota’s Ott Tänak, who finished second. Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville is close behind in third place.

Friday’s afternoon pass was an identical re-run of this morning’s trio of stages, with dry conditions remaining but with more loose gravel coming onto the stage, which meant a higher risk of driving off line or hitting a kerb.

Tänak had no such trouble, although he was bested for pace in the afternoon by Evans, slightly hindered by an issue with the dampers on his Toyota Yaris.

Evans had won SS1 in the morning and went on to win the afternoon pass of Bavella (SS4), retaking the lead from Tänak by 2.7 seconds. He then further extended his advantage in the Valinco test, taking another 3.1s on the Toyota driver.

His chances to keep the lead appeared to evaporate when Evans got stuck behind Tänak’s team-mate Kris Meeke on Alta-Rocca, who was preserving his damaged Yaris through the stage at a reduced pace.

Meeke, who had already fallen down the order with a broken wheel on SS1 in the morning, run wide and hit a kerb on the afternoon’s second stage Valinco, damaging his right-rear suspension. Unable to fix the damage between SS5 and SS6, he drove slowly through the stage, costing Evans 10.4 seconds relative to Tänak.

On appeal by M-Sport, rally officials then awarded Evans a nominal time for SS6 identical to that of Tänak’s, neutralising his time loss and reinstating his 4.5s lead at the end of the rally’s first leg.

Thierry Neuville remained close behind in third place, only 9.8s behind Evans and 5.3s behind title rival Tänak. He had dropped several seconds to the top two on the re-run of Bavella but beat Tänak on the next SS5 stage, and set the fastest time in SS6 by 1.3s from the tied Evans and Tänak.

Neuville’s Hyundai team-mate Dani Sordo retained fourth place but is now coming under pressure from M-Sport’s Teemu Suninen, who is only 4.8s behind the Spaniard. Sordo had been a frontrunner on the morning loop but failed to set a top five stage time in the afternoon.

Reigning FIA World Rally champion Sébastien Ogier struggled with his car throughout this first leg, complaining of understeer aboard his Citroën C3, falling further down from the leaders. But the Frenchman closed up to Suninen ahead of him, finishing the day 5.4s behind the Finn in sixth place. Despite his problems, he leapt past Citroën team-mate Esapekka Lappi for seventh on Bavella, then reached sixth when Jari-Matti Latvala stopped because of a a puncture on Valinco. Latvala initially dropped to 17th place but climbed back to 13th overall at the end of Alta-Rocca.

Behind seventh-placed Lappi, Hyundai's Sébastien Loeb was continuing his recovery drive after damaging his suspension on Friday morning. He lost around 15s to the leaders but steadily climbed his way up the leaderboard to eighth place, 1m41.6s behind Lappi.

WRC2 leader Eric Camilli is ninth overall at the wheel of his Volkswagen Polo GTI R5, extending his gap over reigning French Tarmac champion Yoann Bonato, driving a Citroën C3 R5, by 20s. Bonato is 10th overall.

Though not particularly happy with his car’s set-up, Finland’s Kalle Rovanperä continued to lead the FIA WRC 2 Pro category aboard his Škoda Fabia R5 by over two minutes from Poland’s Łukasz Pieniążek, who was delayed by a puncture this morning.