WRC Rally of Portugal: Heavy rain disrupts recce

Torrential rain brought about the cancellation of the recce of the Ourique and Santana de Serra stages on Tuesday, forcing the crews to practice those two tests on Wednesday's shakedown day.

The heavy rain has stopped and the forecast is brighter into the event now.

A spokesperson from the event said: "There is still some mud around, but the flooding has gone from the stages.

"There might be some small rain around in the next couple of days, but nothing like what we have seen."

Michelin has postponed its tyre recce until Thursday in an effort to ensure it offers the drivers the most up-to-date information possible.

Initial concerns over the limited number of soft compound tyres - the crews have 16 soft and 29 intermediate tyres - look to have passed with the improving weather.

M-Sport's tyre engineer George Black said: "Once Michelin has done its recce then we'll have a clearer idea of what we'll need for Friday morning.

"It's possible Friday morning could be a bit of a gamble, but otherwise - if the weather does what it's supposed to do - I think we should be looking at the harder tyre.

"There was a lot of water around, but these roads do dry very quickly; the temperatures are rising and there's always a lot of wind around on these roads and that helps to clear them out.

"The only problem then is that you have kilometre after kilometre of a dry, hard and grippy surface and then a really, really slippery section which is under the trees and out of the wind."

Follow the Rally of Portugal as it happens with AUTOSPORT Race Centre Live from 10am UK time on Friday April 4