Rally Germany

And just like that we only have one stage to go this afternoon - Romerstrasse.

According to reports the stage is clouding over and it's raining at service park. Could we be in for a dramatic finish to the day? We'll find out soon enough!

In the meantime here's Seb Marshall's preview:

SS17 Romerstrasse (7.63miles)

I must admit, I’m not a huge fan of this stage. It’s quick with not so much going on. I have eight and a half pages of notes for just under eight miles – compare that to, say, Gartheiniog in Wales which is a stage of similar length and I’d have 16 or 17 pages for Garth… There are lots of straights and lots of ‘flat maybe’ corners. It’s going to be really hard to make time up in this stage, I would imagine the top seven or eight cars will be setting times very close to each other. The difference here will come from the aero and the engine – anybody who’s got their car working perfectly will have the confidence not to lift, taking the ‘maybe’ out of the ‘flat maybe’.

Overall leaderboard:

1 Tanak
2 Mikkelsen +24.8s
3 Ogier +31.8s
4 Evans +1m47s
5 Hanninen +1m47.3s
6 Breen +2m02.4s
7 Latvala +4m09.2s
8 Paddon +4m33.1s
9 Camilli +8m16.4s

SS16 results:

1 Ogier 8m44.8
2 Latvala +0.4s
3 Mikkelsen +0.7s
4 Tanak +1.1s
5 Paddon +1.7s

10 minutes until we get underway on Freisen. Here's Seb Marshall's thoughts:

SS16 Freisen (9.18 miles)
This countryside-style road is pretty much the same as it was last year. It’s quite interesting with some narrow and tricky sections where the bushes at the side of the road narrow the stage down even further. There are some long straights in here, something that will definitely be more of a feature of the second half of the rally.

SS13/14 summary:

• Tanak extends lead by as Mikkelsen stalls at the start of SS14
• Ogier now 4.5s behind Mikkelsen 
• Hanninen moves into fourth place, 1.7s ahead of Evans 

Overall leaderboard after SS14:

1 Tanak
2 Mikkelsen +26.7s
3 Ogier +31.2s
4 Hanninen +1m19.4s
5 Evans +1m21.1s
6 Breen +1m55.7s
7 Latvala +2m12.4s
8 Paddon +4m20.2s
9 Kopecky +6m14.6s

Before we head off to Panzerplatte let's take a look at the results from SS13 and 14, which includes a few names we haven't really seen so far today

SS13 stage times:

1 Sordo 1m43.3
2 Tanak +0.1s
3 Mikkelsen +0.6s
4 Meeke +0.6s
5 Ogier +1.1s

SS14 stage times:

1 Sordo 1m43.4
2 Meeke +0.3s
3 Tanak +0.4s
4 Latvala +0.5s
5 Lappi +0.6s

Here's Seb Marshall to remind you all what awaits the field:

SS15 Panzerplatte (26.08miles)
By the time we get here we’ve had our Baumholder hors d’oeuvre in the shape of the Arena Panzerplatte spectator stage. That ones only a couple of miles long, but it’s good to get in there and get loosened up after the road section. But then it’s the big one: Panzerplatte. This one’s a bit of a classic and it’s one heck of a stage. In some places, it’s just corner after corner, but then there are some faster stretches as well – again it’s a stage with lots of tempo and rhythm changes. The organisers have put some straw bales on some of the corners in here – and in some of the other stages. This is to try and keep the cars away from some of the biggest cuts, which could help to keep the road that bit cleaner.

During the recce it was still quite damp in lots of places in here which made grip quite inconsistent. What makes the grip even more inconsistent is the surface change itself – it’s going from asphalt to broken concrete to gravel to concrete to broken asphalt all the time. In the car, you really feel the car struggling to find grip and keep contact with the road. You don’t get the same physical forces with the high-speed slowing into hairpin that you get in the vineyards, but it’s still a full-on experience to go through Panzerplatte at full speed.

I think this one could be the decisive stage on this year’s event; certainly, by the time we leave here for the second time around on Saturday, I think we’ll have a very good idea of who’s doing what in the event.