Toyota driver Ogier won four of the day’s six stages to head into Saturday with a 22.8s lead over Rovanpera, who impressed despite starting first on the road.
Ogier held a 2.5s lead following the morning loop, with his only issue a lack of hybrid on stage four. He then produced a faultless afternoon performance to clean sweep the three stages.
Toyota’s Elfyn Evans held a relatively comfortable third (+43.5s) following Neuville’s exit from fourth due to a suspension failure on stage six.
Neuville’s Hyundai team-mate Esapekka Lappi inherited fourth (+54.0s), despite losing time to a puncture in the morning. Toyota’s Takamoto Katsuta ended the day fifth, ahead of Hyundai’s Dani Sordo.
M-Sport’s Ott Tanak, who lost a tyre off the rim in the morning, rose to seventh (+3m03s) after tyre problems for team-mate Pierre-Louis Loubet dropped him to eighth.
Ogier almost produced a carbon copy of his morning run through the Loldia stage, which was much drier compared to the first pass.
With the hybrid issue fixed Ogier was again untouchable in the test, posting a time 8.4s faster than next best Lappi. The effort resulted in Ogier extending his overall rally lead by 15.3s over Rovanpera as the latter struggled with understeer, having felt he'd made a "small mistake on set-up".
"My strategy is a bit different," said Ogier. "I tried to drive more clean and gain the performance from the tyres. It's only in the last one that the risk is very high."
Source: Autosport