Sweden WRC: Neuville grabs lead on Friday afternoon loop

Neuville lost the lead to Jari-Matti Latvala on the last stage of the morning loop after hitting a rock, but he was back ahead in the Hof-Finnskog test.

Then, he took 17.9s out of Latvala through Svullrya, the stage he had issues on in the morning. Despite his door opening on the stage, he extended the gap further on the Torsby test. 

Toyota's Latvala struggled through that penultimate test, overdriving the car and making small mistakes. He consolidated second overall, 21.6s ahead of M-Sport Ford's Ott Tanak.

Tanak had a gearbox change at service after his car was skipping to neutral on occasion while downshifting. But a stage win for the Estonian on SS8 – coupled with a poor time by Citroen’s Kris Meeke – meant he jumped from fifth to third. 

Meeke stole the podium spot from Tanak on the penultimate stage of the day, but on the Torsby test he said his driving was “horrible” and that he was “really slow” after losing many of the studs in his tyres. He holds fourth.

Tanak’s teammate Sebastien Ogier struggled with cleaning the road, but a rapid time in Svullrya limited the damage. He’s 3.9 seconds behind Meeke, but 55.7s behind Neuville with two days to go.

With the new FIA regulations, Ogier won’t have to run first on the road tomorrow and will have a better chance of competing for stage wins.

Hayden Paddon showed a resurgent performance when changes at service unlocked a much more “drivable” Hyundai. Having been at the back end of the top 10, the Kiwi was in the top five on all of the final three stages of the day to jump teammate Dani Sordo for sixth.

Craig Breen – in his first appearance in a 2017-spec WRC car, lost confidence after putting his Citroen in a snow bank.

He holds eighth ahead of Elfyn Evans (DMACK Ford), who combined flashes of pace with a puncture that sent him down the order, and Stephane Lefebvre's 2016-spec Citroen DS3.

The second Toyota of Juho Hanninen has been forced to retire after hitting a tree on SS5, while Mads Ostberg (Ford) has plummeted down the order after losing his rear wing on the same stage.

Ostberg, who had already lost 50 seconds for leaving service late after a change of gearbox, was forced to drive the following test without his rear wing before it was returned ahead of SS7.

Skoda works driver Pontus Tidemand is dominating WRC2, over half a minute ahead of works M-Sport Fiesta driver Teemu Suninen. 

Standings after SS8:

Pos.	Driver	Car	Time/Gap
1	Thierry Neuville	Hyundai	1h16m24.7s
2	Jari-Matti Latvala	Toyota	+28.1s
3	Ott Tanak	Ford	+49.7s
4	Kris Meeke	Citroen	+51.8s
5	Sebastien Ogier	Ford	+55.7s
6	Hayden Paddon	Hyundai	+1m17.8s
7	Dani Sordo	Hyundai	+1m40.3s
8	Craig Breen	Citroen	+1m54.3s
9	Elfyn Evans	Ford	+3m01.5s
10	Stephane Lefebvre	Citroen	+3m23.6s