Italy WRC: Neuville leads Tanak after Thursday stage

The Belgian driver opened the event he won last year with a scratch time 0.2s quicker than Ott Tanak.

Estonian Tanak suffered was slowed slightly by a stuck wiper blade, but his time was still enough for him to head Dani Sordo, who had an uneventful run to round out the top three.

M-Sport driver Elfyn Evans took fourth on an event which isn’t expected to suit his DMACK tyres. He topped a resurgent Hayden Paddon, who had a breakthrough performance on the championship’s previous round in Portugal.

Portugal winner Sebastien Ogier faces a weekend of sweeping the road as the championship leader, and took a line different to anybody else through a right-left kink that had his M-Sport Fiesta on two-wheels. Still, he brought the car back in sixth.

A trio of Citroens rounded out the top 10, but it was new blood in the team taking the mantle of fastest C3 WRC.

Andreas Mikkelsen, with a one-event deal with the squad after starting the year in WRC2 with Skoda, topped Kris Meeke and Craig Breen.

The three Toyotas of Jari-Matti Latvala, Esapekka Lappi and Juho Hanninen all struggled on the opener, filling the immediate spots outside of the top 10.

Yohan Rossel topped the WRC2 runners through the stage in his Citroen DS3 R5, 5.9s down on Neuville’s benchmark.