Jari-Matti Latvala was left to curse the Welsh weather after seeing a strong run on the opening leg of Wales Rally GB come to an abrupt end of the sixth and final stage of the day.

The young Finn, fresh from a podium finish last time out in Ireland, continued where he left off in the Emerald Isle with a series of solid stage times at the wheel of his Stobart VK M-Sport Focus WRC and went into SS6 in a solid fourth place.

However, with the weather conditions far from easy – with torrential rain, heavy fog and strong winds – the 27.91 km second run through Rheola proved to be a challenge for the drivers as darkness descended and when his windscreen wipers failed, Latvala was unable to keep his car on the road and went off into a bank – dropping him down the order to 15th.

"After a slowish first stage things got much better on the next two stages," he reflected. "While I was still making some small mistakes and sliding too much in places the rhythm was OK and we were in fourth fighting Loeb for third.

"In the last stage everything went wrong. The visibility was really bad and my wipers were not working properly. The rain was so bad I couldn't see anything and then I hit a bank quite hard on a very rough part of the stage which damaged the bumper and made the wipers stop working completely. I really couldn't see anything at all and had to stop and get out of the car a few times to clean the mud off the windscreen. There was so much water coming up over the screen that I had no option but to stop in places.

"It was a really frustrating end to what was a very encouraging start to the rally."