Thierry Neuville survived gearbox woes to maintain his lead of Rally Sweden after the Saturday morning loop, ahead of Craig Breen who overtook both of Neuville’s team-mates for second place.
Neuville battled through gearbox issues, which meant he had to manually change gear at the end of the first stage of the day. This was fixed before he arrived at the next stage, and his rally lead over Breen stands at 5.9 seconds, aided by a win of the final stage of the morning.
Mikkelsen came into Saturday in second but dropped two places on stage 10 (Hagfors) when he spun his Hyundai i20.
He reclaimed third position from team-mate Hayden Paddon on the final stage of the morning, but now sits 17.6s adrift of the lead.
Mads Ostberg continues to drift from the podium but is only 2.3s off Paddon.
Esapekka Lappi leads the trio of Toyotas in sixth, seventh and eighth position, they all jumped the leading Fiesta of Teemu Suninen.
Ott Tanak won two of the three stages on Saturday morning, as he continued his fightback after a miserable Friday, in which he was left furious by the organiser’s snow-ploughing.
The Estonian is now eight seconds behind his team-mate Jari-Matti Latvala, the gap was 22.8s at the start of the day.
Kris Meeke holds a lonely 10th position behind Suninen but ahead of the M-Sport regulars Sebastien Ogier and Elfyn Evans.
Ogier ran second on the road, but didn’t suffer as much as he did on Friday, setting the third fastest time on the final stage of the morning.
Toyota protege Takamoto Katsuta continues to shock in the WRC2, leading the category by eight seconds ahead of Skoda young guns Pontus Tidemand and Ole Christian Veiby.
