Quotes:
Juha Kankkunen (Deputy Team Principal)
“It’s been a good day, except for what happened to Seb. I could tell that something was not right because this corner was nothing special, and sure enough he’d had a slow puncture and so the car didn’t turn. It was quite a hard impact, but mainly on the wheel, so it didn’t do too much damage and the car will be good to restart tomorrow. Seb will be motivated, he can start as first car on the road, and I’m sure we will see some speed from him tomorrow. It certainly makes the championship fight interesting. Kalle is still doing a great job in the lead, and there will be a good fight between Elfyn and Tänak, so I’m really looking forward to tomorrow.”

Elfyn Evans (Driver car 33)
“It’s been an OK day but I’m naturally not happy with the pace that we were able to show, especially this afternoon. We were pushing but not really able to deliver the pace, and we haven’t been at the level that I want to be at. We tried to change some things on the car during the day, but it didn’t necessarily go in the right direction. So we need to try and find out why tonight and have another go at it tomorrow, with a lot of points available.”

Kalle Rovanperä (Driver car 69)
“It’s been a good day for us. We had a really good and tight fight going on with Seb and it’s never easy against him. It was not nice to see what happened to him, and the best thing is that he and Vincent are both OK. After that we just had to focus on our own job and I think we did pretty well, as there was a lot of dirt coming onto the road with every car. We still kept a good pace and rhythm and enjoyed the driving without taking any risk. Tomorrow will be a big day at this point of the season, with four of us who need all the points we can get. We also have the rally win to secure, so it won’t be easy but we’ll try our best.”

Sébastien Ogier (Driver car 17)
“I knew that this second stage of the day would be the most difficult with the rain and the leaves on the road, but we were driving with a good rhythm and feeling. Unfortunately, we started to lose pressure from the front-left tyre close to the end of the stage. Going through a fast right-hander, I couldn’t do anything and we just understeered into the ditch and hit a tree. It’s frustrating but I don’t think I could have done anything differently and sometimes it’s just a matter of luck. The good news is that we should be able to restart tomorrow and we will do our best to take the full 10 bonus points.”

Takamoto Katsuta (Driver car 18)
“It’s been a good day overall. I can’t be fully happy, as I lost quite a bit of time on the second stage this morning. The conditions were very tricky in sections and I was not really committed enough in those places. Otherwise, we could do two fastest times in Klatovy – things were working well in that stage. In the other stages too, the car feels good and when I’m pushing, the times are there so that’s a good sign. There is still a long Sunday to come and I will try to keep pushing.”

Sami Pajari (Driver car 5)
“It has again been a tricky day. Like yesterday, I think we had some strong stage times and some that were not so great. So there is plenty of learning to take from that, but I’m generally satisfied that we had no mistakes or issues and some steady pace, getting closer to the front. There are still quite many kilometres tomorrow, especially in the Power Stage which is quite long, but they’re nice stages so I’m looking forward to them.”

End of day three (Saturday):
1 Kalle Rovanperä/Jonne Halttunen (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) 1h56m14.7s
2 Ott Tänak/Martin Järveoja (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) +36.3s
3 Elfyn Evans/Scott Martin (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +44.7s
4 Takamoto Katsuta/Aaron Johnston (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +58.3s
5 Adrien Fourmaux/Alexandre Coria (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) +1m37.8s
6 Sami Pajari/Marko Salminen (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +1m59.0s
7 Thierry Neuville/Martijn Wydaeghe (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) +2m30.9s
8 Josh McErlean/Eoin Treacy (Ford Puma Rally1) +4m39.3s
9 Oliver Solberg/Elliott Edmondson (Toyota GR Yaris Rally2) +6m32.5s
10 Jan Černý/Ondřej Krajča (Škoda Fabia RS Rally2) +8m26.1s
38 Sébastien Ogier/Vincent Landais (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +49m49.9s
(Results as of 22:00 on Saturday, for the latest results please visit www.wrc.com)

What's next?
Sunday’s final day features two passes of the Beyond Borders stage – which spans Germany and Austria – as well as the all-Austrian Mühltal test, totalling 77.78 competitive kilometres. There will be a final tyre-fitting zone before the second pass of Mühltal serves as the rally-ending Power Stage.