Former champion Sebastien Ogier has taken an early lead at the ongoing World Safari Rally Championships Kenya Rally in Naivasha, Nakuru County ahead of penultimate stage on Saturday.
The eight-time champion showed his rivals a clean pair of heels on the opening day of action and had established a double-digit lead just three special stages into this seventh round of the FIA World Rally Championship.
Ogier survived a hybrid unit scare in the late morning run to slice his buffer to just 2.5sec over team-mate Kalle Rovanperä before the midday service in Naivasha.
But that failed to deter Ogier, who gambled by carrying only one spare wheel aboard his Toyota GR Yaris for the repeated afternoon loop.
His weight-saving tactics clearly worked wonders as he romped to a hat-trick of benchmark stage times, ending the day 22.8sec clear of Rovanperä at the sharp end of a Toyota 1-2-3.
M-Sport Ford drivers Ott Tänak and Pierre-Louis Loubet had a day to forget.
Both lay several minutes back from the lead in seventh and eighth overall after carrying out mid-stage wheel changes, although their second-tier colleague Grégoire Munster gave the British team something to smile about by leading the WRC2 category from Kajetan Kajetanowicz in a Fiesta Rally2.