Citroën Total Abu Dhabi World Rally Team secured 3rd and 4th positions on day 2 of Rally Finland, the eighth round of the FIA World Rally Championship.

British driver Kris Meeke was leading after SS2, and won SS7, but the outstanding form of championship leader Sebastian Ogier and Jari-Matta Latvala deprived him the early lead and he ended the day third, ahead of teammate Mads Østberg.

Sheikh Khalid bin Faisal Al Qassimi was focused on gradually building up speed and confidence with every stage completed and was lucky to escape a trip into a ditch on SS3.

“The stages are super-fast. I’m building my confidence gradually after a 4 year absence from Rally Finland where at some point you have to lift off to avoid mistakes,” said Al Qassimi.

“There are drivers pushing beyond the limits, and this is the only way to set fast times at Rally Finland which is full of blind corners, blind crests and high jumps across forests and dense trees.”

Kris Meeke expressed his happiness with the Finnish stages, saying: “Finland is a wonderful place to race aboard WRC cars. I had good feelings all day posting some excellent times with every stage driven, where I had the lead up till the end of stage 2.

“I suffered during SS4, it felt that the car is going on 3 wheels with a problem thought to be the drive shaft but turned out to be the transmission which made us lose precious seconds.

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“In general we feel very confident; our goal is to end the race with the highest number of points for Citroën Total Abu Dhabi World Rally Team, strengthening our overall standing in the championship.”

After the service break, Meeke was still facing some issues with his car, but the British driver won SS7 and was a full three seconds up on Latvala.

“Sometimes when you have a little thing it focuses the mind,” he said. “The front end of my car is still wandering, it has a mind of its own, but I can cope with it – in the corners it follows the ruts. It’s at 99 per cent and I can make up the other one per cent, but in Finland you have to be 100 per cent to get close. I did everything I could to get close.”

In the junior WRC, Abu Dhabi Racing’s Mohamed Al Mutawaa was steadily increasing his speed, taking advantage of enhanced pace notes compared to Rally Poland, and finishing the day inside the top-10 after moving up from 15th to 9th.