Rally Mexico, WTCC opener

WRC - Mexico: Ostberg matches Mikkelsen's time for second on the stage, while Evans is 3s off the pace - and that drops him a tenth behind Mikkelsen overall.

WRC - Mexico: Latvala is slowest so far on the Leon streets, although he's still within eight tenths of Ogier on the stage and 16s overall.

WRC - Mexico: Mikkelsen slips in second fastest, half a second off Ogier and two tenths up on Neuville.

WTCC - Argentina: It's been a fairly eventful day at Termas de Rio Hondo thus far, but for many of the wrong reasons. It's never good when a circuit has a windowless press room, but compound that with blank TV monitors and no timing and scoring system and you have a near riot...

Overnight rain - Argentina's summer has been bedevilled by drought and bushfires in the south, combined with storms and the worst flooding in 50 years here in the north – had infiltrated some vital electrical systems at the lakeside circuit. That didn't stop today's 30-minute test kicking off on time, though.

Ominously, Citroens filled the top three places with Sebastien Loeb going fastest of all.

Over lunch, series boss Francois Ribeiro outlined some of his plans for the future. He'd like to see a German driver in the series to complement its return to that territory.

Most intriguingly, he hankers after running WTCC cars on the oval at Motegi, even if it's just a qualifying race. Obviously that would involve getting the oval section repaired after recent earthquake damage, though...

WRC - Mexico: Spare a thought for Benito Guerra amid today's disruptions.

Mexico's top rally man (the 2012 Production world champion) tends to get hold of a World Rally Car for this event and was sixth last year. He's got a Ford Fiesta again this time but was the first man caught up when SS3 was halted so the organisers could try to find Tanak's car.

No one behind Bertelli was able to do SS3 and SS4 at full pace, so Guerra is awaiting notional times to find out where he is. When he did SS5 properly, he was slightly faster than Bertelli, who's currently credited with ninth overall.

Benito Guerra, WRC Mexico 2015

WRC - Mexico: And also, amid all that, Ott Tanak's Ford has ended up sinking to the bottom of a reservoir.

WRC - Mexico: So how is Ogier leading this rally when he was so adamant that it was completely and utterly impossible to do that while running first on the road?

Two factors, we reckon:

1) The opposition has made a mess of this. The front-running drivers with the best (i.e. furthest back) road positions this morning were Kris Meeke and Robert Kubica, and both were in the mix for the rally lead - with Kubica poised to take it after SS4 by quite a margin - when they hit trouble. We know Meeke crashed, we're yet to get proper details from Kubica's crew.

Latvala is struggling for focus and confidence and Neuville (whose road position isn't actually much better than Ogier's) went off for a bit on SS4. So the door has been held wide open for Ogier to lead this.

2) Ogier has been brilliant. He's made soft tyres last and work in the very cold conditions, and just gone for it flat-out without getting too furious about his running order situation.

The end result is Ogier leading by 8s over Neuville against the odds - but Neuville is now coming back at him, so this is only just getting started.

And if Latvala can sort his head out, he still has the best road position of the remaining cars and is only 15s off the lead.

WRC - Mexico: With the field heading for a street stage, here's DAVID EVANS' own experience of the Leon streets...

Taking a cab anywhere in Leon usually involves climbing aboard a – at least – 20-year-old Nissan which comes with a windscreen festooned with mirrors, televisions, rosaries and photographs of family, friends and Jesus himself.

AUTOSPORT's ride yesterday was taken in the back of a Ford jeep which came with three permanent rows of seats and an interior square footage approximately twice the size of the first flat I lived in in London.

Not only was it bigger than my Dollis Hill gaff, but it also came with a rumbling V8 which sounded powerful enough to drag Leon along behind it.

Taxi

WRC - Mexico: Prokop and Bertelli are also through the stage smoothly.

WRC - Mexico: Sordo makes it to the finish. Looks like a less dramatic stage for the Spaniard this time and on current pace he's going to take seventh off Prokop here. He's 10s off pacesetting team-mate Neuville and says his gearbox still isn't great.

WRC - Mexico: We're currently in the gap where Paddon and Meeke should've been if they hadn't crashed.

Prokop, Sordo and Bertelli are still running too, in seventh, eighth and ninth overall - and that's the entire field as the stoppage following Tanak's shunt on SS3 has caused a bit of a logistical hassle further down the order.

And after his strenuous efforts to get his car going again, Kubica remains stopped on SS4.

Leaderboard after SS5:

1 Ogier
2 Neuville +8.9s
3 Latvala +15.0s
4 Ostberg +23.9s
5 Evans +31.1s
6 Mikkelsen +33.5s

WRC - Mexico: Ostberg and Evans have completed SS5, going fourth and fifth quickest and keeping those positions overall.

Minor drama for Evans, as he had to dodge some cows. That's probably a regular hazard back home in Wales too (in case of any accusations of anti-Wales-sentiment there, we're only making that suggestion because the Devon-dwelling element of AUTOSPORT often has to drive around cows and sheep so we assume Wales is similar).

WRC - Mexico: Latvala is still only 15s behind rally leader Ogier and there's plenty of time for further bizarre things to happen.

WRC - Mexico: Mikkelsen completes SS4 15s off Neuville's pace, the Norwegian playing it safe while he lacks experience here.

Latvala is in too, a few tenths slower than Ogier - and given their relative road positions, it definitely shouldn't be that way around.

WRC - Mexico: Neuville has now got Ogier's overall lead back down to 8.9s, and the Hyundai man says he went off into a ditch for a while on the last stage too. But for that, this would be closer still.

WRC - Mexico: Latvala +2.3 at split 1. Ogier properly on it!

WRC - Mexico: Mikkelsen +8.4 to Ogier at split 2.

WRC - Mexico: This time Ogier is losing a bit of momentum on the loose gravel - Neuville takes over three seconds out of him at the first split.

WRC - Mexico: So we've lost four of our 14 World Rally Cars, and among those are everyone whose road position gave them a really good shot at pulling off an upset here, including Meeke and Kubica.

WRC - Mexico: Kubica isn't giving up yet, he's continuing to work on his RK Ford on SS4 and has got going again, though his time loss is now over 15 minutes.

WRC - Mexico: Sordo finally makes it in, 50s off the pace, and explains that he struggled to get off the startline as his Hyundai wouldn't select a gear, and then he was driving blind for a while after a watersplash left the screen badly misted up.

WRC - Mexico: There's been a long gap on this already crazy rally with both Paddon and Meeke having stopped on this stage. Sordo will be due in next.

WRC - Mexico: Kubica briefly resumed running on the tracking system, but it looks like he's stopped again.

He'd started the stage only 4s off rally leader Ogier, and was 11.4s faster when he stopped.