Sebastien Ogier managed to recover from a crash on Thursday morning during the warm-up test for Rally Italia Sardegna to top the session.
The Frenchman hit a gate post during the 3.92km Olmedo dirt road speed test, but he wasn't the only one to do so.
Despite the impact, which forced him to limp to the finish – where Citroen mechanics were waiting for him after receiving approval to conduct repairs – Ogier got back up running and went on to top the test by almost a second to Toyota's Ott Tanak.
"We knew there was an extremely tricky corner through a gate," Ogier explained to the official WRC website. "It was very narrow and you had to make a hairpin into this gate, and obviously it wasn’t wide enough to go sideways with the car.
"I thought I did it very slowly but it wasn’t slowly enough with very little grip from being first on the road. I clipped the outside of the gate with my rear left corner and damaged the toe link. That was it for my start of the day."
Thierry Neuville was third fastest with a time 1.7s slower than Ogier's best on his final of four attempts. Neuville was another driver to clip the post including Elfyn Evans, who much to his rivals delight, dislodged the post with his Fiesta, removing the hazard.
Evans was eighth fastest at the end of the day, three-seconds down.
Teemu Suninen, Kris Meeke and Andreas Mikkelsen all tied for fourth place with Jari-Matti Latvala seventh.
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