WRC Rally Italy

David Evans has further explanation of the below tweet:

It appears the debate about Jari-Matti Latvala’s time from SS12 might not be as clear-cut as the Finn would like to think.

One fellow competitor pointed out: “Look at the split times for Jari-Matti; he’s not losing so much time to the rest of the guys when he is caught in the dust. His time loss to Tanak is stable.

“The problem we have is that the stewards in Portugal set a precedent by giving Thierry the time back and now it’s going to be very difficult to maintain that.

"When you have dust, everybody wants to make a strong case and tell them (the stewards) they lost so much time. What happened in Portugal [with Neuville being awarded time back after being caught in – ironically – Latvala’s dust] was wrong.

"As competitors, this is part of the game and these kind of things usually even out across the season.”

There shouldn’t be any dust issues this afternoon, with the lead cars running at four-minute intervals.

It’s remarkable how much information is needed when you park a Lancia Stratos clothed in one of motorsport’s most evocative liveries next to it. Say hello to Alghero’s most photographed Lancia.

Scroll down for tyre allocations this afternoon, but missing from our previous post was Elfyn Evans. David Evans caught up with the Welshman.

Evans has taken six hard DMACKs and admitted this would be an important afternoon in terms of development for the British tyre firm.

He told Autosport: “Apart from maybe Australia, this is about the only afternoon where we’re going to be running hards and really working them.

"It’s a good chance to get some data from the tyres and find out how the development is coming along.

"There’s no doubt we’ve made a big step from last year and getting through this afternoon will help us get more data to move forward again.”

Here's a stage guide with rally-leading co-driver Seb Marshall.

SS10/13 Coiluna-Loelle (9.07 miles)
"This is traditionally one of the softer stages on the rally, but quite fast and flowing. In years gone by the organisers have used some of the technical narrow roads in the forest, where it’s a bit of a labyrinth to be honest, but this time we’re on more of the open roads.

"There’s one of the event’s bigger jumps near the start of the stage and then towards the end we go into a sort of gymkhana-type track a kilometre or so from the finish.

"The organisers have built another jump into this section, but the crews complained about how big it was after the recce, so the top’s been shaved off it.

"If they hadn’t done that, it’s quite likely we would have landed on the moon!"