Quotes:
Jari-Matti Latvala (Team Principal)
“We can be very happy overall tonight. To bring Kalle here with no chance for him to properly prepare for the event, and for him to be able to take the lead of the rally and win so many stages, it’s really remarkable. Elfyn has also had great pace. Unfortunately he had this problem with the tyre this afternoon so he lost a bit of time, but he’s still in the podium places at the end of Saturday. Overall, things are looking really good for the team in terms of the provisional points at this stage, and now we’re very motivated for Sunday. We haven’t always been the strongest on Sundays so far this year, so this is something we’ll try to improve tomorrow and to be fast as a team because we know those points are also important for the championship.”

Kalle Rovanperä (Driver car 69)
“I tried my best the whole day. The morning loop was better than yesterday, but it was still tricky like expected for us with some small surprises. I would have wanted to be a bit faster there, but it was a good fight. The afternoons are definitely more enjoyable, as I know better what’s coming and can drive with more of a normal pace and feeling about the stages. Nothing is certain yet. The gap is small for tomorrow, which is still quite a long day with a different type of stages. I think it will be tougher than today, maybe the toughest day for me in terms of our preparation and pacenotes: we need to work a lot this evening and try to be quick tomorrow. I don’t think it’s going to be easy, but we’ll keep trying our best.”

Elfyn Evans (Driver car 33)
“It’s been a big fight out there today, especially this morning when it was all quite tight. It was a clean morning from our side and we were feeling pretty good in the car. Unfortunately we had a setback with the tyre issue in the first stage of the afternoon. It was very sudden and I wasn’t sure what had happened at first but we just lost the tread completely. We lost a bit of time, and when it’s this tight, that was pretty much the end of the fight for today. We tried what we could but couldn’t claw back the time. Still, overall it’s been a better weekend for us up to this point. Tomorrow is a new day with a lot of points up for grabs. We’ve got to try and keep a good rhythm, keep doing what we’ve been doing all weekend, and see what that brings.”

Takamoto Katsuta (Driver car 18)
“The feeling in the car today was much better than yesterday. The only frustrating thing is that the times were not so good, but I think this was coming from the conditions that we had with our road position. They were very difficult, especially during the second loop in the afternoon, running first on the road with a lot of cleaning. Even under braking it was difficult to know how much grip there was because there was a lot of sand in the ruts. When it was wide and high-speed without so many ruts, we could have similar split times to the leaders, but when it was narrow and rutted I was losing a lot of time. Tomorrow I’ll try to do my best and improve my driving, and try to find more confidence to push in the next two rallies.”

End of day three (Saturday):
1 Kalle Rovanperä/Jonne Halttunen (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1 HYBRID) 2h00m44.0s
2 Andreas Mikkelsen/Torstein Eriksen (Hyundai i20 N Rally1 HYBRID) +9.4s
3 Elfyn Evans/Scott Martin (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1 HYBRID) +16.1s
4 Adrien Fourmaux/Alexandre Coria (Ford Puma Rally1 HYBRID) +37.0s
5 Mārtiņš Sesks/Renārs Francis (Ford Puma Rally1) +58.2s
6 Thierry Neuville/Martijn Wydaeghe (Hyundai i20 N Rally1 HYBRID) +58.3s
7 Grégoire Munster/Louis Louka (Ford Puma Rally1 HYBRID) +1m24.5s
8 Takamoto Katsuta/Aaron Johnston (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1 HYBRID) +1m41.9s
9 Sami Pajari/Enni Mälkönen (Toyota GR Yaris Rally2) +5m46.5s
10 Oliver Solberg/Elliott Edmondson (Škoda Fabia RS Rally2) +6m12.8s
(Results as of 19:30 on Saturday, for the latest results please visit www.wrc.com)

What's next?
The final day of action on Sunday all takes place close to the service park in the form of two repeated stages totalling 63.06 competitive kilometres. The Gmina Mrągowo stage is followed by the Mikołajki test – the second pass of which will serve as the rally-ending Power Stage.