Craig Breen continues to hold third place on Rally Liepāja – by going slowly. The Irishman thought he’d punctured a tyre after clipping an object nearing the finish of the rerun of Rallyofchampions.com and dropped his pace as a result.

“I clipped something about two and a half kilometres from the finish so I drove quite slowly, I thought I had a puncture,” said Breen, who reached the stage finish with mud lodged in the right-rear wheel of his Peugeot 207 S2000.

- Craig Breen (Aigars Tīdmanis, www.go4speed.lv)

Despite his cautious finish to the stage, Breen still recorded the second fastest time to increase his advantage over Kajetan Kajetanowicz in the battle for the final podium spot.

Out front, Espaekka Lappi bagged his sixth stage win of the rally for ŠKODA Motorsport. It means the Finn’s lead ahead of Sports Racing Technologies’ Vasily Gryazin is now 19.8s.

“It’s a good time,” said Lappi. “We had good grip and a good feeling so why not push? I am not at 100 per cent. I am at 90 per cent so I don’t make any mistakes.”

Mattias Olsson was fastest in ERC Junior, 0.7s quicker than Petter Kristiansen. Jan Černý, who was third quickest, has built his category lead to 24.6s ahead of Risto Immonen. Kristiansen moves into third after Stéphane Lefebvre retired on stage nine when his Peugeot 208 R2 reportedly caught fire.

Latvian driver Jānis Vorobjovs, who inherited the ERC Production Car Cup lead on stage nine, was quickest in class and leads Vitaliy Pushkar by 29.1s. Oleksii Tamrazov lost time with a puncture and bent wheel on his Fiesta S2000.

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