Korhola king of WRC3 on Friday in Finland

After beaching his Ford Fiesta Rally3 in Estonia a fortnight ago, there were no signs of a repeat of that misfortune on home soil for Korhola, who took out seven of the day’s nine stages. Amazingly, he outpaced overnight leader Filip Kohn by a mind-blowing 21.1sec in the day’s first test.

As Kohn slipped down the standings on Friday morning following his Harju stage win the night previous, Korhola found his main competition coming from fellow Finns Jesse Kallio and Kristian Nieminen. However, Nieminen crashed out of contention on the first pass of the legendary Myhinpää, as did Kazakh debutant Petr Borodin, who had been running sixth at the time.

Nieminen’s demise left a two-way battle between Korhola and Kallio but the latter, having won stage 3, could only match the pace of Korhola through one further stage as he eventually completed the day 32.0sec in arrears.

Sitting third overall in parc ferme overnight is Ali Türkkan, 1min 58.5sec back from Korhola. In turn, he has a comfortable 24.7sec lead over fourth-placed Kohn.