Kris Meeke has survived a dramatic afternoon to take the overnight lead of RallyRACC Catalunya - Rally de España and the Citroën driver takes a 13 second advantage into the closing 74.26 competitive kilometres on Sunday. Sébastien Ogier has stayed out of trouble and climbs to second with team-mate Ott Tänak hot on his heels, team orders out of the question with both Fiesta drivers fighting for the world title. 

Meeke and the C3 WRC have performed faultlessly throughout the day and the Briton now needs to keep focused and manage his advantage to the podium tomorrow. Behind him, however, the leaderboard was turned on its head on the penultimate stage with a number of the frontrunners hitting trouble, leaving Ogier to snatch second position. Two fastest times aided his charge but the Frenchman was able to claim the place from Dani Sordo when the Spaniard hit a rock and damaged the suspension on his i20 WRC. Moments later, team-mate Andreas Mikkelsen did the same thing and took a wheel off, their retirements seriously denting Hyundai’s fight for a maiden Manufacturers’ Championship title. Tanak was lucky to escape after hitting the same rock and knocking out the steering and the Estonian will doubtless be pushing hard over the closing stages to get ahead of his team-mate. 

Toyota’s Juho Hänninen has had a great day and won two of the three morning stages and he has moved into fourth following Sordo’s retirement. Behind the Finn, Thierry Neuville is determined not to give up the fight for the world title. He lost time with technical issues this morning but set one fastest time this afternoon and is focused on overhauling Hänninen to limit the damage to Ogier in the championship standings. Esapekka Lappi is sixth having moved ahead of Mads Østberg and admitted he needs to work on his pace notes for next year. Østberg had a good day before he too hit the same rock as Sordo and Mikkelsen, without serious consequence. Stéphane Lefebvre has climbed to eighth with Elfyn Evans in ninth. Eric Camilli, in a Fiesta R5 car, is 10th overall.

In the FIA WRC 2 Championship, Teemu Suninen holds a 44.4 second lead over Jan Kopecky, even though the Czech Škoda driver has won each of the day’s stages. The final round of the FIA Junior WRC was between Nil Solans and Nicolas Ciamin; Solans provisionally claimed the title this morning* after notching up sufficient stage win points and looks set to also take the event victory after Ciamin retired with broken suspension this afternoon.

Sunday is an early start for the crews with the first stage running in darkness at 07:00 hrs. A further five stages, all run without the sanctuary of service, then follow before the podium back in Salou.

* Subject to official publication of the results by the FIA

RallyRACC Catalunya – Rally de España – Provisional results after Section 5