Meeke will not return for day three

Meeke retired from the Olbia-based event on the third stage, while running in fourth place, when the fly-by-wire throttle on his car remained open and forced him off the road in a fifth-gear corner. The team says it is not prepared to risk the same thing happening again. Prodrive chairman David Richards will make a statement at 0800 local time on the issue.

"It's very disappointing that we're not going to start this morning, it would have been good to get more mileage today, but we can't risk what happened on Friday happening again," said Meeke. "We went out yesterday and we felt the problem was there on the first stage in the morning."

Mini technical director Dave Wilcock said: "There is an issue with Kris's car and we're not 100 per cent about it. It is related to the first day, there's an underlying issue with the car and we have to get to the bottom of it."

The team confirmed that the throttle problem with Dani Sordo's sister car yesterday was not the same as Meeke's issue. Prodrive also confirmed that Meeke's water leak on the second stage yesterday morning was not linked to his third-stage accident.