Leg 3 am: McRae still leading

The 206 driver won the opening two stages of the final leg to reduce McRae's advantage to 27.6s. With Richard Burns forced to retire with suspension failure, the lead pair will surely contest the win, but Argentine winner Carlos Sainz holds a watching brief in third, 90s behind his team-mate.

After performing brilliantly over the first two legs, Freddy Loix will not be giving Hyundai its best result of the season. The Belgian hit a rock on SS14 and holed his sump. He managed to limp the oilless Accent to the end of the stage, but the team felt there was no way it could continue.

This has promoted Harri Rovanpera to fourth, just less than 20s behind Sainz. Petter Solberg is a further 10s adrift in fifth, while early leader Markko Martin has climbed his way up the leaderboard into sixth.

Gilles Panizzi has retired his semi-works 206 after gearbox problems on SS14, while Alister McRae went out with a broken steering arm on SS13.

The penultimate stage of the day is the longest of the rally. At almost 38kms, SS15 could well decide the outcome of a tense battle for outright victory.