Azores ERC: Sousa leads after drama for Peugeot's Breen and Abbring

Breen, who had led the event since its first stage on Thursday, had just extended his lead to 6.5 seconds by winning stage nine with a four-second margin, but quickly pulled over after the in-control and dived under the bonnet of his 208 T16 to deal with a fire.

He briefly used a fire extinguisher, and spent the next few minutes on the phone to his team while working on the car, but its wiring loom was beyond repair.

Abbring inherited the lead on SS10, the famous 'volcano stage' of Sete Cidades, but his power steering failed in the closing miles, causing him to drop 23s. He would then lose the lead to Sousa on the final stage of a dramatic day two.

"I have never driven the car like this," said Abbring of his issues, which he tried to fix by the roadside. "If you make a small drift angle you can forget it."

Ford Fiesta RRC driver Sousa will take a 6.3s lead over Abbring into the last day of the event on the mid-Atlantic island.

"I will try like hell to win this rally," said Sousa. "Of course, I'd like to be winning on the road, and not because of problems to the others. I have to be very smart now."

Vasily Gryazin finished the day in third place in his Sports Racing Technologies Ford as many of the fancied frontrunners fell by the wayside.

Leading positions after SS11:

Pos  Driver             Team/Car             Time/Gap
 1.  Bernardo Sousa     AT Ford            1h24m57.5s
 2.  Kevin Abbring      Sainteloc Peugeot       +6.3s
 3.  Vasily Gryazin     SRT Ford             +1m31.0s
 4.  Bruno Magalhaes    Delta Peugeot        +2m47.7s
 5.  Pedro Meireles     Skoda                +4m20.5s
 6.  Jean-Michel Raoux  Munaretto Peugeot    +4m31.3s
 7.  Adruzilo Lopes     ARC Subaru           +4m35.0s
 8.  Luis Rego          Mitsubishi           +4m42.0s
 9.  Ruben Rodrigues    Mitsubishi           +4m54.2s
10.  Stephane Lefebvre  Sainteloc Peugeot    +5m57.2s