Jari Ketomaa leads Rally Liepāja-Ventspils by 7.0s with one stage of leg two left to run.
Ketomaa was 5.5s faster than Craig Breen through the second pass of the high-speed, 21.31-kilometre Neste Oil test in his turbocharged Ford Fiesta RRC.
“It was a very nice flowing stage and it went well,” said Ketomaa. “I made a couple of mistakes and braked too early for a few places. I’m not completely familiar with the movement of the car and it’s very tricky for the set-up because some stages you have good grip and some stages not so much.”
Breen, in a normally-aspirated Peugeot 207 Super 2000, said: “I set a goal not to lose too much time and I’m in a good position to fight for tomorrow. I’m a young kid and I have the possibility of winning a European championship rally so why shouldn’t I go for it? We’ve got a little bit left in the tank.”
In the battle for third place, Alexey Lukyanuk has moved ahead of François Delecour, who once again bemoaned his car’s lack of outright grunt on the super-fast stages.
Raimond Kisiels has dropped behind Siim Plangi into eighth place. The Latvian feared he had damaged his MINI John Cooper Works RRC when he reach the stage finish.
Saturday’s final stage, Ventspils kalns, gets underway at 17:20hrs local time.