Polish driver Kajetan Kajetanowicz is the leader of the Azores Airlines Rallye after day one ahead of Alexey Lukyanuk and Ricardo Moura.
Second placed Lukyanuk had been leading the rally going into the final stage of the day, however the Russian would end up in second overnight after completing SS4 two seconds slower than his rival, with reigning ERC champion Kajetanowicz ahead by a tiny margin.
2016 Azores Airlines Rallye winner Moura is in third and 13.8 seconds adrift of the leader and is being closely followed by SS4 runner up Ralfs Sirmacis in his Skoda Fabia R5 who also leads the new for 2017 ERC Junior U28 class.
Fifth in Portugal overnight is Bruno Magalhães followed by Nikolay Gryazin in sixth and German Marijan Griebel in seventh.
The top 10 is rounded out by José Suárez in eighth, Jan Černý in ninth and Irishman Josh Moffett in tenth.
Chris Ingram leads the way in both the ERC Under 27 and ERC3 classes in his Opel Adam R2 ahead of team-mate Jari Huttunen who is just two seconds behind with the pair running 28th and 29th overall respectively.
The ERC2 class sees Sergey Remennik leading in his Mitisbishi Evo X ahead of Luis Pimentel and Zelindo Melegari and the ERC Ladies class is led by Italian Molinaro Tamara.
The 2017 Azores Airlines Rallye continues throughout this weekend until 1 April.