“We had a go,” said Tänak. Indicating he was still feeling the after effects of driving with no power steering on Saturday afternoon, the 2019 world champion added: “A bit hard on the jump landing but this body is dead anyway, so that’s the way it is. It’s been tough.
“I’m already pushing quite a bit so I don’t know much more we can do.”
Road sweeping was once again in full effect on the first pass of stages, as Thierry Neuville and Takamoto Katsuta both struggled to match the pace of the frontrunners starting behind them on the road.
“There’s lots of cleaning, I guess not much we can do,” said Neuville, who fell 14s adrift of Tänak after the first pass of Sunday’s stages.
Katsuta looked ragged for much of the morning, cutting a frustrated finish after completing the Paredes stages and smacking a bank on Fafe – though he insisted the latter was on purpose and a tried-and-tested line through the turn.
Adrien Fourmaux was a case in point of the road sweeping effect: having retired on Friday, all his eggs are in the Super Sunday basket – but as first car on the road, he could only muster eight-fastest on the Sunday leaderboard after three stages, 46.7s off the pace.
Elfyn Evans is catching Toyota teammate Sami Pajari for sixth overall, cutting the gap from 17.5s to just 3.2s.