Further down the order, Aaron Burkart was fourth in his Citroen C2 S1600, 3.5 seconds up on the Renault Clio of Jozef Beres. Both ended the day though more than 20 seconds off the final place on the podium.

"It was tricky for me to get used to the Corsican stages during the first loop this morning," said Burkart. "There are several places where you have to cut the corners precisely and that demands a huge degree of control over the car. The second loop was better for us. I'm in a solid fourth place with my C2 Super 1600 – which hasn't caused me a single problem all day."

Of the rest, Conrad Rautenbach rounded out the top six, followed by Arnaud Augoyard and Yoann Bonato, who is making his debut in a Citroen C2 S1600 this weekend, having used a C2-R2 on his previous outings in the Junior Rally Championship.

Bonato had been running fourth overall, just 1.8 seconds off P-G until a puncture in SS4 cost him around 2.5 minutes. He still finished the day on a high though and topped the times in SS6.

"The C2 Super 1600 is very different to the R2, and much more fun to drive," noted the Frenchman. "But we started carefully this morning in order to continue to adapt ourselves to the C2. We set some good times but I think we were still hoping for more - especially when we fell victim to a puncture on the first stage of the second loop.

"We lost a lot of time and several places in the Junior classification. But at least we managed to get some time back when we went quickest on the final stage."

Renault Clio runners, Michal Kosciuszko and Andreas Cortinovis complete the top ten.