WRC Rally Mexico: Sebastien Ogier leads; Meeke, Kubica, Tanak crash

The World Rally champion has been helped by incidents for many of those who had been best-placed to upstage him on Friday, while the whole rally was interrupted on the day's first stage by a bizarre accident in which Ott Tanak's M-Sport Ford sank to the bottom of a reservoir.

Tanak rolled off the road less than two miles onto the day's Los Mexicanos opener.

His Fiesta landed wheels first in a reservoir and immediately sank. Tanak and co-driver Raigo Molder able to escape safely.

With communication lost and the car underwater and not visible to following crews or the organisers' search helicopter, a worrying wait followed before the stage was halted and the crew found.

Kris Meeke and Robert Kubica had particularly strong road positions and both became lead contenders, with the Citroen driver quickest of all on SS3 and Kubica setting a dominant pace on the first of the 26-mile-long El Chocolate stage.

But Meeke crashed out early on that stage and Kubica stopped further on, taking both out of potentially rally-leading positions.

With Jari-Matti Latvala admitting he was not driving well and lacked the rhythm and confidence to take advantage of being fourth on the road, and Thierry Neuville slightly delayed when he went off into a ditch late on SS4, Ogier found himself still leading.

It was not an inherited lead, though, with the Volkswagen driver flat-out and making good use of a tyre choice leaning towards softs in unexpectedly cold weather.

Neuville fought back on SS5, and although Ogier was slightly faster on the Leon street stage that followed, the gap between the VW and Hyundai was down to 9.6s heading for service, with Latvala a further 6s back in third overall.

Mads Ostberg was delayed by a spin on the day's first stage and holds fourth, ahead of Andreas Mikkelsen and Elfyn Evans, who swapped places on the Leon street stage and are just a tenth apart.

Having crashed twice on his only previous visit to Mexico last year, Mikkelsen admitted he was driving deliberately cautiously on this event so far.

Dani Sordo is a distant seventh on his return after missing Sweden following a cycling accident. His Hyundai has been hampered by gear-selection problems.

LEADING POSITIONS AFTER SS6: