Ogier sets up Tour de Corse victory, Meeke drops out

Click here for full WRC SS10 classification from Tour de Corse

Sebastien Ogier looks set to clinch a dominant victory at Tour de Corse for M-Sport Ford with a comfortable time gap to Toyota’s Ott Tanak while Citroen’s Kris Meeke tumbled out of contention on the final stage of Saturday’s action.

The reigning World Rally Champion holds a 44.5-second lead over Tanak with two stages to go in Corsica having steered clear of the chasing pack during the afternoon loop which claimed three high-profile names.

Meeke, who had been battling Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville for second place, crash out on SS10 Novella 2 after slipping off and down a hillside which saw the Citroen driver tumble out of the event at the exact same stage as he did from 12 months ago.

The Citroen squad later discovered it was a pace note mistake which caused Meeke’s off which will see the French manufacturer leave its home event without a premier class points finisher after Sebastien Loeb’s SS2 off.

With Neuville in third place Esapekka Lappi jumped up to fourth place for Toyota with Hyundai’s Dani Sordo taking fifth place. Elfyn Evans has closed the gap to Sordo to just 3.1s in the battle for fifth place with Hyundai’s Andreas Mikeelsen a distant seventh place.

Jan Kopecky leads the WRC2 class for Skoda by almost 90 seconds from Citroen’s Yoann Bonato.

Jari-Matti Latvala (Toyota) and Bryan Bouffier (M-Sport Ford) both exited the Tour de Corse on SS8 with a crash for the Finn while the French driver suffered an engine issue.