WRC Finland, Red Bull Ring DTM and F3

WRC - Finland: Evans is 4.4s slower than Meeke, and next man in Sordo is off the pace too.

Meeke does seem to have a good shot at salvaging at least one bonus point here as lots of the drivers ahead will be focused on securing their finishes not going wild for the powerstage.

Sordo began today chasing Bertelli for 10th but was 11s slower than the Italian privateer on this morning's opener so that swiftly ended that battle.

Slow on Friday, in a ditch on Saturday, slow on Sunday - not a great weekend for Sordo and he'll be glad to get to Germany, where he has a great record.

WRC - Finland: Citroen's third driver Khalid Al Qassimi will be next through, he's on course for 17th.

Then it'll be Elfyn Evans, who will be only 13th after spending most of his Friday with his rear suspension held together like this:

Suspension damage

Very good effort to both fix it between himself and co-driver Dan Barritt without service, and to not fall outside the top 20.

"We got the car through and we got experience at least," he says.

WRC - Finland: The powerstage is about to begin.

Order into the stage will be: Meeke - Al Qassimi - Evans - Sordo - Bertelli - Prokop - Hanninen - Tanak - Neuville - Ostberg - Ogier - Latvala

Then we'll have the Skodas to round things off and clinch WRC2.

WRC - Finland: Last year AUTOSPORT Live become slightly obsessed with a giant orange walking around - and sometimes dancing around - the service park.

It was a bit elusive for the first two days of this year's rally, but...

Orange

DAVID EVANS: He's back! Or maybe, she's back. It's rather tricky to sex the orange without contravening all sorts of EU law. Anyway, it's just good to see the WRC's friendliest walking fruit back in the service park.

Interestingly, this one seems a lot shorter than last year's orange. Is this orange offspring? The mind boggles, especially given that the other fruit on parade last year was an apple.

Shall we get back to the rally?

WRC - Finland: And the seventh Finn to win Rally Finland/1000 Lakes back-to-back is the 21st century Finnish legend: Marcus Gronholm.

He won here from 2000-02 and '04-07.

Marcus Gronholm, Peugeot, WRC Finland 2000

Another guy has back-to-back wins here - Sebastien Loebinen. Loebholm? Loebvala? No, just Loeb. Not a Finn, just a legend.

And in not very long at all, Latvala will try to become the eighth Finn to take back-to-back home wins.

IndyCar - Mid-Ohio: Another thing we won't be covering in AUTOSPORT Live tonight but that you can catch up on straight after the finish in our news section is the Mid-Ohio IndyCar race.

Scott Dixon, who has won five times here, broke the track record as he narrowly denied Will Power pole.

That's good news for Dixon's title bid, with leader Juan Pablo Montoya starting only 10th and second-placed Graham Rahal 13th after a spat with Sage Karam.

Mid-Ohio IndyCar qualifying report

WRC - Finland: And the sixth Finn to take back-to-back 1000 Lakes wins was... Tommi Makinen.

It started with his famous out-of-the-blue 1994 triumph in the private Ford, and then he was unbeatable in the works Mitsubishi from 1995-98.

Tommi Makinen, 1000 Lakes WRC Finland 1994

Euro F3 - Red Bull Ring: The final F3 race of the weekend at the Red Bull Ring is scheduled to start in just 15 minutes, but there are still ongoing discussions about whether the race should go ahead after heavy rain this morning.

V8 Supercars - Queensland: This isn't an exploding engine, it's an Australian celebration.

There's no stopping Prodrive Racing Australia (the team formerly known as Ford Performance Racing) in V8 Supercars right now.

Chaz Mostert wins Queensland V8 Supercars 2015

Mark Winterbottom stretched his championship lead with two more wins at Queensland Raceway yesterday, then Chaz Mostert followed up the announcement of his contract extension by winning today.

Craig Lowndes at least split the Fords in second today and remains Winterbottom's main title rival, but champion Jamie Whincup's season isn't getting much better - only eighth today after troubled pitstops, and only seventh in the championship, almost 500 points adrift.

But with the big-scoring enduros of Sandown, Bathurst and Surfers Paradise not far away, Winterbottom remains cautious.

DTM - Red Bull Ring: The session won't be restarted. Fog also looks an issue out of the window, obviously the medical helicopter has to be able to fly if required.

So if the weather stays as is, we might not see a full programme of DTM or F3 action today. The final F3 race is scheduled to start in about 35 minutes, but maybe don't hold your breath for that one.

WRC - Finland: Finns who've taken back-to-back Rally Finland/1000 Lakes wins countdown reaches #5: Timo Salonen, two in a row in 1985-86 and a reason to run a Peugeot 205 T16 pic.

Timo Salonen, Peugeot, WRC Finland 1000 Lakes 1986

DTM - Red Bull Ring: About half of the field headed out to sample the conditions, with Glock and da Costa among those we saw having harmless offs, but the session has now been red flagged. Genuinely treacherous conditions.

DTM - Red Bull Ring: The big news so far today is that after two days of glorious Austrian summer, the skies have opened. After some showers, it's been pouring for the last hour or so, and the Audi TT Cup race was red flagged after a plie-up on the run to Turn 2.

The DTM warm-up is due to get underway shortly, and the forecast is that these conditions will stick around for qualifying and the race later on today.

WRC - Finland: Next up in our rundown of Finns who've won the 1000 Lakes back-to-back (which we're doing to ramp up fever for how big this achievement will be for Latvala, not to put pressure on him), is Markku Alen, who was unstoppable here from 1978 to '80.

That 1978 win came in this Fiat 131.

Markku Alen, Fiat, 1000 Lakes WRC 1978

If you're just joining us, here's the plan for the morning...

We'll be updating you on all the events from around the motorsport world this weekend over the next hour, and bringing commentary on what looks like it could be a wet and wild European Formula 3 finale at the Red Bull Ring, plus the second DTM qualifying session.

Then it's the powerstage that will decide Rally Finland, where Latvala sits on what should be a comfortable lead...

And along the way we'll continue highlighting the pantheon of Finnish greats Latvala will be joining by taking back-to-back 1000 Lakes wins. And this will include a picture of a Peugeot 205 T16, naturally.

WRC - Finland: If all goes well on the powerstage in just over an hour from now, Latvala will take his third Rally Finland win and his second in a row.

That would make him the eighth Finn to take back-to-back home wins in the WRC, following a pretty illustrious list.

Simo Lampinen did it in 1963 and '64, Timo Makinen for three straight years from 1965-67, then Hannu Mikkola did it across three decades: 1968-70, '74-75 and '82-83 to make seven 1000 Lakes wins in total.

Here he is on the way to the 1982 triumph in the Audi Quattro...

Hannu Mikkola, Audi, 1000 Lakes WRC 1982

...we'll continue this countdown later in the powerstage build-up because it's a really obvious excuse to run pictures of old rally cars.

WRC - Finland: All smooth for a dominant Skoda one-two in WRC2 still, with Esapekka Lappi and Pontus Tidemand running eighth and ninth overall.

A second straight WRC2 win for Lappi won't quite put him into the points lead by our maths, given that Yuriy Protasov is still running fourth in class, but you wouldn't bet against this new Skoda romping the rest of the season.

Esapekka Lappi, Skoda, WRC Finland 2015

The only man who could match the Fabias this weekend was Jarkko 'remember him?' Nikara, who is standing in for championship leader Jari Ketomaa in the Autotek Ford while Ketomaa recovers from an eye problem that is a legacy of a crash in Portugal.

Nikara's now out, though, with Friday's late driveshaft problems followed by a broken radiator yesterday.

WRC - Finland: He was pushing to beat Tanak to third rather than defending a comfortable-ish lead, admittedly, but Latvala did shunt on the powerstage in Poland last month. That's the sort of thing that does play on this man's mind. It's still not over yet...

WRC - Finland: Next through are Thierry Neuville and Mads Ostberg.

They're on course for lonely fourth and third places so are taking it very easy. Ostberg says he might give it a bit of a crack when it's the powerstage later.

WRC - Finland: By the way, the two VWs are the first cars that are going quicker than Meeke did.

That line through the advertising hoarding was clearly the quickest one. Good shout, Kris.

WRC - Finland: That's pretty much sealed it for Bertelli, he's extended his gap over Sordo by 11s.

The Hyundai man admitted his run was "very bad" and said the set-up just wasn't right.

"This morning I was thinking either I should try to keep Sordo behind or not," says Bertelli.

"It's a very technical stage so I said 'OK, keep a normal pace like yesterday and not try to push too much' and at the end I see maybe Sordo has made a mistake."

This won't be Bertelli's best WRC result - he was ninth overall in his WRC2 car on his home round last year - but a first proper point in the top class, and holding off a works Hyundai to do so, will be well worth celebrating.

Lorenzo Bertelli, FWRT Ford, WRC Finland 2015

WRC - Finland: One focus this morning is whether the often accident prone Italian WRC2 graduate Lorenzo Bertelli can hang on to his first top-10 finish in a World Rally Car.

He's running 10th right now having kept it smooth while so many others found the trees, but started the day with Dani Sordo's works Hyundai 25s behind his private Ford.

Right now though it's looking good for Bertelli - he's 4s faster than Sordo at the split on this stage.

WRC - Finland: First onto the stages this morning is Kris Meeke, who has rejoined under Rally2 after clouting a tree when holding third yesterday.

It wasn't a big hit at all by Finland standards - if you've seen the pictures of what Hayden Paddon and Andreas Mikkelsen did to their cars this weekend, Meeke's looks showroom-ready by comparison - but it broke a wheel and ended his podium hopes.

At a time when he's under a lot of pressure career-wise...

Meeke's Citroen future in jeopardy

Meeke surprised by speculation

...that wasn't ideal.

He's resumed in 21st overall today just to reach the finish. Myhinpaa was smooth bar demolishing an advertising hoarding, which he joked was "in the line". It probably wasn't quite, was it Kris?

WRC - Finland: There's only one stage this morning, so we've gone for the best possible guide: Ari Vatanen.

Myhinpaa is the 1981 world champion's favourite stretch of road in Finland. So it must be special.

AV said: "This stage has been run in two different directions, the way for today hasn't been used for quite a while. It's fantastic both ways, but we have done it more often going towards the east.

"But in 1983, when I was racing against Henri [Toivonen] we came in the other direction. I remember this so well. Henri, between Friday and Saturday night, was making six fastest stages in a row – in the night time – in an Opel Manta against Audi Quattros.

"And then we come to Myhinpaa and we get to the end of the stage, outside the village school and Henri say to me: 'What's your time?' I told him. I was six seconds faster than him. He put his head to the hands and he kind of collapsed.

"Six seconds was a lifetime in this stage.

"Myhinpaa is like life, up and down, left and right , unpredictable. It's incredibly fast and you need to know what you are doing. Like in life.

"But you know, readers of AUTOSPORT should go and look at my website - there is a story for Myhinpaa in there. It tells the true meaning of Myhinpaa."

Ari Vatanen, 1000 Lakes 1981

Welcome back to AUTOSPORT Race Centre Live - two stages to go and a Finn is on the brink of winning Rally Finland for the second year in a row.

But that Finn is Jari-Matti Latvala, a man for whom last-gasp disasters are not unknown, and on his tail is his relentless Volkswagen team-mate Sebastien Ogier.

It's not over yet.

So that's turned out to be a pretty significant start to the weekend in the DTM, and European F3 is closing up once more too.

That's it for our live coverage of today's international racing. We'll be back from 8.40am UK time tomorrow to bring you all the action from the Rally Finland decider, plus the finale of the Red Bull Ring European F3 round. See you then.

Jari-Matti Latvala, VW, WRC Finland 2015