Kris Meeke stamped his class all over the Rally of Scotland to take a 21-second lead into today's final leg.

Already Intercontinental Challenge champion ahead of this weekend's last round, the Ulsterman swept to the top of the leaderboard on the opening spectator stages at Scone Palace on Thursday night and then built a solid advantage through wet, muddy, slippery Scottish forests yesterday.

Much had been made of a potential “Battle of the Brits” with Guy Wilks and initially the two-times British champion matched the pace of Meeke's Peugeot 207, even setting two fastest times in his Skoda Fabia to close the gap to just over five seconds.

But on the final stage of the first leg, Meeke moved up a gear and blitzed Wilks' time, beating the Yorkshireman by 15 seconds to return to Stirling last night firmly in command and on course for his fifth IRC win of the season.

“I took no chances and backed off where I thought it was risky,” he admitted.

Meeke, his Peugeot UK car decked out in a new colour scheme to reflect his status as IRC champion, had a lead of almost 80 seconds over the third place Proton Satria of Alister McRae.

The rest were fading even further into the distance but Jonny Greer, the 21-year-old from Carryduff, was in fourth and leading the production category in his privately-entered Mitsubishi Lancer after a superb run in the conditions.

Another 21-year-old from Ulster, Alastair Fisher, had held that position but it all started to go wrong when he clipped a log pile on stage four, Blackcraig, before his Mitsubishi suffered complete brake failure.

New British champion Keith Cronin also crashed out on stage six as did Irish Ford Fiesta champion Craig Breen and Barry Greer, brother of Jonny, exited when his Fiesta stopped on the final stage.

Positions after stage 7: 1 Kris Meeke/Paul Nagle (Peugeot 207) 56 mins 35.3 secs; 2 Guy Wilks/Phil Pugh (Skoda Fabia) + 21.2 secs; 3 Alister McRae/Bill Hayes (Proton Satria) + 1 min 18.2 secs; 4 Jonny Greer/Dai Roberts (Mitsubishi Lancer) + 3 mins 49.i 50.7 secs; 5 David Bogie/Kevin Rae (Mitsubishi Lancer) + 3 mins 54.2 secs; 6 Jock Armstrong/Kirsty Riddick (Subaru Impreza) + 4 min 44.4 secs; 7 Eamonn Boland/M-J Morrissey (Mitsubishi Lancer) + 8 mins 15.6 secs; 8 Martin Kangur/Kuldar Sikk (Honda Civic) + 8 mins 34.5 secs; 9 Kaspar Koitla/Andres Öts (Honda Civic) + 8 mins 47.9 secs; 10 Sebastien Rousseaux/Serge Le Gars (Subaru Impreza) + 9 mins 13.5 secs.