Elfyn Evans leads Rally de Portugal into the final day after his consistent performance was rewarded when rival and leader Ott Tänak hit difficulty in the weekend’s longest stage on Saturday.

Toyota Gazoo Racing team-mate Sébastien Ogier has moved up into a podium position with five stages remaining today.

Saturday was the longest day of the rally with 165.16 competitive kilometres spread out across seven stages, with the action concentrated on the Cabreira mountains to the north-east of Porto.

After moving up into second overall on Friday afternoon, Evans had a solid and consistent start to Saturday with a trio of second-fastest times in the morning loop.

After he won the opening stage of the afternoon, he then set another fastest time in the second pass of Amarante: the longest stage of the rally at 37.92 kilometres.

When Tänak was forced to pull over with rear right suspension damage, Evans took over at the top of the leaderboard, and after a short street stage in Porto, he ended the day with a 10.7s lead over second place Dani Sordo.

Fighting back after the disadvantage of running first on the road on the loose gravel stages on Friday, Ogier has climbed up to third place overall.

Elfyn said: ““It feels pretty good to be leading the rally tonight.

“Overall, the day went pretty well for us.

“I struggled to find my rhythm a little bit at the start of the morning loop, but after that I was relatively happy.

“The conditions have been pretty tough out there but we seemed to get through it quite well.

“It’s obviously a shame for Ott and what happened to him, but now we find ourselves in quite a strong position.

“It’s still close so it’s all to play for tomorrow and it’s going to be a tricky day.

“But I’m looking forward to those stages and we will definitely give it our best shot.”

End of day one (Saturday):

1 Elfyn Evans/Scott Martin (Toyota Yaris WRC) 3h07m09.1s

2 Dani Sordo/Borja Rozada (Hyundai i20 Coupe WRC) +10.7s

3 Sébastien Ogier/Julien Ingrassia (Toyota Yaris WRC) +1m04.2s

4 Takamoto Katsuta/Dan Barritt (Toyota Yaris WRC) +1m05.7s

5 Adrien Fourmaux/Renaud Jamoul (Ford Fiesta WRC) +4m21.8s

6 Gus Greensmith/Chris Patterson (Ford Fiesta WRC) +4m28.2s

7 Esapekka Lappi/Janne Ferm (Volkswagen Polo GTI R5) +8m21.2s

8 Teemu Suninen/Mikko Markkula (Ford Fiesta Rally2) +9m01.6s

9 Mads Østberg/Torstein Eriksen (Citroën C3 Rally2) +10m46.6s

10 Nikolay Gryazin/Konstantin Aleksandrov (Volkswagen Polo GTI R5) +11m01.1s

TBC Kalle Rovanperä/Jonne Halttunen (Toyota Yaris WRC)

What’s next?

A total of five stages complete the rally on Sunday. The day starts with the returning Felguieras test, followed by the Montim stage and the famous Fafe. A repeat of Felguieras precedes the rally-ending Fafe Power Stage.