Meeke snatches lead

Kris Meeke got the upper hand in a fierce contest with Guy Wilks over the 17.34km Craigvinean stage, both of them putting clear air between themselves and third placed Andreas Mikkelsen. The Peugeot UK driver´s 10m32.5s was 5.7s quicker the Wilks, enough to move 4s ahead of the Škoda UK car and 23s clear of Mikkelsen, who hit a deer during the stage and suffered minor damage.

"That was absolutely awesome," said Meeke. "It was a good, clean run. I didn’t take any risks, but I did hit a few huge stones that I didn’t see on the recce – maybe Juho [Hänninen] kicked them up while he was cutting."

"We were probably a bit too stiff with the car set-up and we’ll need to address that," said Wilks. "There’s quite a bit more moisture in the surface than we were expecting – what was hard on the recce is now a bit soft."

Juho Hänninen was first out on the road and had to contend with a moist surface and low light, but was quick enough to move up to fourth overall for Škoda Motorsport. "It was much more slippery than I expected and difficult to see," he said. "I had a huge moment on the third corner – a big one! It woke me up…"

Proton suffered mixed fortunes during the stage; its leading driver, Alister McRae, stopped several times before tracing the problem to a loose alternator wire, finally reaching the finish after losing around 10 minutes. Keith Cronin and Tom Cave both picked up punctures.

"It happened at one of the hairpins about 3km up the road," said Cave. "I felt it hit a rock. I’m gutted. The conditions are really slippery and I haven’t got any confidence at all."

The Group N cars were in spectacular form again as Euan Thorburn jumped from 12th to seventh in his Ralliart Lancer Evo IX, less than four seconds behind class leader David Bogie in sixth.

"It’s certainly not the easiest conditions," said Bogie. "I was quite surprised at how slippery it was. The car was sliding around a lot at low speeds and braking was difficult, but I’m not here to finish second so I’m going to carry on pushing."

Siim Plangi continues to lead the 2WD cup entries in 15th overall, 2m17.8s behind Meeke.

Overall positions after SS3:

Stages 3 & 6 Craigvinean

After the short blast around Scone Palace the real meat of the competition starts with almost 18 kilometres along the steep sides of Craigvinean Forest. This test starts with a long climb for the cars to the top of the hill at 400metres in height before travelling along the top ridge for some distance and descending through numerous hairpins and arriving at the stop line, which is very close to where the competitors started from around 15 minutes earlier. Due to the nature of the climb and the height of the hill it is common for the top section to be covered in mist and fog. This also happens to be one of the quickest sections of the test so fortune will favour the brave and those committed to their pace notes.

Guy Wilks says: “You couldn’t want for a nicer opening forest stage. It was my first forest stage in a Škoda Fabia S2000, so we won’t be taking it so easy this time. Craigvinean is very fast and flowing for the first two-thirds of the stage, allowing you to really attack it. The last third is extremely tricky and very slippery if it’s wet – the surface here seems to really hold the water, so the car moves around a lot. There are a lot of blind crests, you need total commitment throughout the stage and the pace notes need to be spot on. The spectator area at The Hermitage is a great place to watch the action from.”