Juho Hanninen remains in the lead of Rally Azores after the second loop of Friday stages, which was truncated by the cancellation of SS9.
The reigning Intercontinental Rally Challenge champion lost a few seconds to the chasing Andreas Mikkelsen when he struck a rock and damaged a tyre on SS7, but rebuild his lead to 10 seconds by going quickest on SS8.
The following Sete Cidades stage was then called off due to delays extracting cars that had stopped around the fog-bound course when it was initially run in the morning.
Bruno Magalhaes (Peugeot Portugal) continues to battle with Jan Kopecky’s Skoda for third, with just 1.8s separating the pair heading into the day’s final three stages.
Leading positions after SS9: Pos Driver Team/Car Time/Gap 1. Juho Hanninen Skoda 47m56.3s 2. Andreas Mikkelsen Skoda UK + 10.1s 3. Bruno Magalhaes Peugeot Portugal + 30.4s 4. Jan Kopecky Skoda + 32.8s 5. Patrik Sandell Skoda Sweden + 1m35.9s 6. Bryan Bouffier ROMO Peugeot + 1m48.0s 7. Ricardo Moura Mitsubishi (private) + 2m07.3s 8. Vitor Lopes Subaru (private) + 3m07.1s 9. Vitor Pascoal Mitsubishi (private) + 4m05.7s 10. Pedro Vale Mitsubishi (private) + 4m25.7s