Day 3am: Sainz slips up

Martin started the day with a 14.4sec advantage over Sainz, and immediately extended his lead by setting the fastest time on Sunday's first stage - albeit by only two-tenths of a second on the 30.47km opener. Petter Solberg was only third fastest, the first time he'd not set a fastest time since Friday.

Sainz struck back on the next test, taking 2.8secs out of his Estonian rival. That brought the overall gap between them down to 11.8secs.

But disaster struck Sainz on, typically, SS13. The Spaniard pushed too hard and rolled, losing 1m13secs to Martin, and dropping him behind Duval into third position overall. Solberg got back into his stride here, pipping Martin and Peugeot's Marcus Gronholm by just 0.1secs for the fastest time, showing just how keenly fought this event has been.

Duval is 35.8secs behind Martin, and is highly unlikely to challenge for victory unless Markko makes a late mistake. Sainz has a couple of minutes in hand over Subaru's Mikko Hirvonen, although the latter is just 24secs ahead of team leader Solberg. Gronholm holds a lonely sixth, ahead of Hyundai privateer Jussi Valimaki, who has Mitsubishi's Gilles Panizzi not far behind.

Two stages of the event remain.