Russian Alexey Lukyanuk is the leader of the Azores Airlines Rallye in Portugal ahead of Bruno Magalhaes and Ricardo Moura.
Lukyanuk, who won the opening three stages of the day leads by 27.8 seconds ahead of Magalhaes with Moura, who suffered a puncture on SS8, a further six seconds behind in third going into day three.
After the first day, defending European Rally Champion Kajetan Kajetanowicz was leading the event however the Polish driver crashed out just two kilometres into the opening stage on Friday after striking a wall. The double title winner is however aiming to restart in the rally on Saturday morning and pick up valuable bonus championship points.
Fourth in the event is Nikolay Gryazin in a Skoda Fabia R5 and continues to lead the ERC Junior U28 class in his first event in the car followed closely by Marijan Griebel in fifth overall and second in ERC Junior U28 just 2.8 seconds behind.
Josh Moffett in his Ford Fiesta R5 is in sixth overall and third in ERC Junior U28, with Jan Černý in seventh, Carlos Viera in eighth, Lukasz Habah in ninth and Pedro Meireles rounding out the top 10 overall.
Photo Credit: Jorge Cunha / DPPI
In the ERC Under 27 and ERC3 classes despite suffering a scare in SS7, Chris Ingram continued where he left off after day one and leads team-mate Jari Huttunen in a Vauxhall Adam R2 one-two and the pair are 18th and 19th overall. Third in ERC Under 27 is the recovering Aleks Zawada in a Peugeot 208 R2.
Sergey Remennik continues to lead Luis Pimentel in ERC2 while the Portuguese stages have taken their toll in the ERC Ladies class as all five of the entered crews have retired from the event.
The Azores Airlines Rallye continues until April 1.
