Intro:

Dani Sordo leads as support rally fatality curtails day

Script:

Dani Sordo will go into the final day of Rally Germany with a slender lead over Thierry Neuville, after a fatal accident in a support event brought Saturday's racing to an early end.

Neuville and former leader Jari-Matti Latvala both encountered problems on Saturday afternoon.

The Volkswagen driver began the second loop of stages with a 14.8-second advantage over Neuville, but things soon went wrong on the Stein & Wein test when his co-driver's door failed to close.

He then made slow progress through the 26.5km stage before coming to an abrupt halt after hitting an obstacle that resulted in his retirement.

His misfortune temporarily promoted Neuville into the lead of the event - ahead of Sordo - but a malfunctioning exhaust and a fencepost lodged under the Belgian's M-Ford Fiesta resulted in him losing time.

It now means that Sordo has a slender 0.8 second advantage over Neuville going into Sunday's final two stages as the afternoon's competition was cancelled after an accident on the non-competitive historic demonstration running behind the main event in which two people died.