Motorsport: Kalle Rovanpera closes in on victory at Rally New Zealand

Kalle Roverpera has hit the front at Rally NZ. Photo / Getty

Kalle Rovanpera has produced some magic in the midst of Puhoi carnage to emerge in the box seat to win Rally New Zealand and the WRC driver's championship.

The 22-year-old Finn won four of the six stages on Saturday to cultivate a 29-second lead over eight-time world champion Sebastian Ogier.

With heavy rain belting down on the Kaipara Hills, Rovanpera said avoiding mistakes was half the job.

"I always seem to enjoy the tricky weather. Our car is also quite enjoyable in those conditions. I think if it were fully dry, we wouldn't have such good pace to attack.

"I always know that in these conditions, you can take some time off from others if you do a perfect stage."

Estonian Ott Tanak struggled for speed and is a further 17.4 seconds back, 46.4s off the pace.

Rovanpera needs to beat Tanak by eight points to become the youngest WRC winner with two rounds to go.

Kiwi Hayden Paddon has a 2m4s lead over Poland's Kajetan Kajetanowicz at the top of the WRC2 standings and sits sixth overall.

Supercars champ Shane van Gisbergen is a further 1m4s back in third, ninth overall.

The day's drama began before any rallying even took place, with Tanak, Rovanpera and Thierry Neuville all copping five-second penalties for an offence in the opening stage at Auckland Domain on Thursday.

The cars were found to have exceeded the maximum amount of energy produced by hybrid boosts.

Tanak, Neuville and Oliver Solberg later suffered further ten-second penalties for the same offence on stage seven.

The Estonian dropped to second, with Britain's Elfyn Evans unexpectedly taking the lead to start the day.

However, that's where the Toyota driver's luck would end.

Evans crashed into a bank on stage nine, losing the rear of his car and the bumper.

"Just coming from quite a fast place, steep downhill braking. Just lost the rear basically, and the braking," Evans said. "There was no chance to recover it on the throttle and unfortunately, we touched the bank on the inside and rolled."

The Brit was forced to retire halfway through the day, and the carnage continued on stage 10, which was cancelled after a major crash involving Gus Greensmith.

The British driver slipped off the track and rolled twice just a minute into the Komokoriki 1 track, forcing a red flag.

Both Greensmith and co-driver Jonas Andersson were okay, but the same cannot be said for their Ford Puma, which was cleared off the track in pieces.

Japan's Takamoto Katsuya then rolled off the track on stage 12, with Ireland's Craig Breen damaging the side of his Ford on the first corner.

Rally New Zealand reaches its precipice on Sunday with the stage at Jack's Ridge in Whitford. The final of 17 stages, it doubles as the power stage, which awards up to five competition points for the top five finishers.

All 13,000 tickets have sold out for the event and Paddon said it should be a great atmosphere.

"We'll definitely try to put on a show but there's still an element that it's so important we bring home the result. It's been a lot of work to get into this position so we'd be stupid to throw that away."