Italy WRC: Neuville keeps narrow lead over Latvala, Paddon out

Thierry Neuville continued in the lead after Rally Italia Sardegna's Friday afternoon loop, adding further three stage wins to his tally.

Having led by only 1.5s after the morning, a stage win from Jari-Matti Latvala saw the Finn take the lead after SS6.

However, Neuville responded by topping all three of the following stages and opening up a still rather small gap of 11 seconds.

Sebastien Ogier, first on the road, failed to keep up with the leading duo and his deficit grew from 23.7s to 40.3s as a result.

The Frenchman was closely followed by Norwegian duo Andreas Mikkelsen and Mads Ostberg as the top five was separated by less than a minute.

While Dani Sordo ended up a further 20 seconds behind in sixth, the Spaniard's partner Hayden Paddon in the main Hyundai team retired in SS7.

The Kiwi driver rolled at the very final turn of that stage and was forced to withdraw from the rest of the day.

Ott Tanak recovered from a morning spin to finish the day in eighth just behind WRC veteran Henning Solberg, who was struggling with throttle issues.

Pos.	Driver	Team	Gap
1	Thierry Neuville Nicolas Gilsoul	Hyundai	1h14m03.2s
2	Jari-Matti Latvala Miikka Anttila	Volkswagen	+11.1s
3	Sebastien Ogier Julien Ingrassia	Volkswagen	+40.3s
4	Andreas Mikkelsen Anders Jaeger	Volkswagen	+57.5s
5	Mads Ostberg Ola Floene	Ford	+58.5s
6	Dani Sordo Marc Marti	Hyundai	+1m18.6s
7	Henning Solberg Ilka Minor-Petrasko	Ford	+2m32.5s
8	Ott Tanak Raigo Molder	Ford	+2m35.6s
9	Umberto Scandola Guido D'Amore	Skoda	+2m35.9s
10	Teemu Suninen Mikko Markkula	Skoda	+2m48.3s