MATOSINHOS, Portugal — Toyota's Ott Tanak survived a late suspension problem at the dust shrouded Rally of Portugal on Saturday to cling to a narrow lead over Kris Meeke.

Tanak, an Estonian, who won the last rally in Chile, sustained damage to his front right suspension on the day's final stage — the longest of the rally at 37.6 kilometers.

He was forced to nurse the car through to the finish and will go into Sunday's concluding seven specials with a 4.3-second advantage over Toyota colleague Meeke.

"Twenty-five kilometers before the finish we broke the front right damper. Five kilometers after I went wide in a corner and had to reverse. It was a challenging stage. Tomorrow, if there are no issues, it should be a good day," Tanak told the WRC website.

Brake failure had earlier threatened to scupper Tanak's hopes as he pulled over for emergency repairs after the eighth special, a 20.53km speed test at Vieira do Minho.

Jari Matti Latvala, second after the morning session, tumbled out of contention after his Toyota also ran into suspension troubles on stage 11.

"Another fight for the podium and another retirement. It's devastating. But even if we are really down right now, we won't give up on anything," Latvala tweeted.

Meeke climbed up one spot in the afternoon but his day was not without incident either, the Briton hindered by a suspect handbrake.

Belgian Thierry Neuville was third in a Hyundai at 9.2 sec.

While Tanak weathered mechanical issues most of the other drivers were complaining about the thick clouds of dust on the dirt roads round Porto.

"The dust is very bad. We could do the Paris-Dakar," said Finn Esapekka Lappi, fifth in a Citroen.

"There is just too much of it, I actually had to stop because I couldn't see anything."

Sebastien Ogier said the gaps between cars needed to be increased to allow the dust to settle.

"The shame is that we asked for a four minutes interval yesterday," said the Frenchman, who is over 20 minutes off the pace in a Citroen. — AFP