World Rally Championship points leader Thierry Neuville set the fastest time on Rally Italy Sardinia’s shakedown ahead of the rally start later on Friday afternoon.
The 1.3-mile Ittiri test was held predominantly on a rallycross circuit and, despite a good start to his weekend, the Hyundai driver was scathing of the warm-up’s lack of relevance to the stage mileage to come: “This shakedown is just ridiculous. The guy who invented this should be fired, but today, not tomorrow.
“We can do nothing in there, we can work nothing, so heading into the stages not knowing how the car is working with the conditions we’re going to face with the cleaning will be very demanding, but it is it what it so, so we try to keep hopeful.”
The shakedown did at least share one crucial element with the rest of the rally – road cleaning.
Many of the crews were unhappy with the use of a rallycross circuit as the shakedown stage, including Takamoto Katsuta
Neuville was only tenth-fastest on his opening run, with a time of 2 minutes 19.8 seconds. He slashed that to 2m13.7s on his second pass, before taking a further 0.2s off that on his final attempt.
Fellow Hyundai driver Ott Tänak was second fastest, just 0.6s slower than Neuville and, when asked about the opening up loop of stages, he was well aware of the challenge to come: “Definitely much more fun than this one. It will be demanding. It’s quite a bit shorter as well, so it will make it just more intense.”
Sébastien Ogier, who is expected to excel in Sardinia by virtue of starting fifth on the road, set the fastest time on the opening pass with a time of 2m 17.1s, but would eventually slot in behind Tänak by 0.1s, having only completed two runs compared to the three of those ahead of him.
Takamota Katsuta and Grégoire Munster were the only drivers apart from Neuville and Tänak to complete third passes. The Toyota driver was fifth fastest having set a best time of 2m 14.7s on his final run, equal to the time of Dani Sordo’s Hyundai ahead, but was also not impressed with the preparation offered by the shakedown stage.
“Yeah, so this is pretty much a Mickey Mouse shakedown, so I don’t know what I can feel from this but I’m looking forward to the rally.”
On a tight and technical stage that suited second-tier machinery, several WRC2 drivers were close to the pace of their Rally1 counterparts; Pierre-Louis Loubet set the sixth fastest time overall, just behind his former M-Sport team-mate Adrien Fourmaux in the lead Ford Puma.
Second-in-the-championship Elfyn Evans only managed eighth fastest time and was the second-slowest Rally1 car ahead of Munster, who was 3.6s off the pace.
The Toyota driver was 2.4s slower than Neuville and was concerned about the grip levels he would face when the rally got underway proper: “Hopefully there’s a little more grip than that on the stages, but I’m not so sure that’s going to be the case.”
Martin Prokop was second-fastest of the WRC2 crews 1.2s off Loubet’s second-tier benchmark.
Paraguayan Fabrizio Zaldivar was third fastest of the WRC2 runners in a Škoda Fabia and rounded out the top 10 with a time 1.6s slower than Loubet.
Teemu Suninen was third-fastest of the WRC2 crews, a further 0.4s behind Zaldivar as he looks to bounce back following his accident in Portugal. WRC2 championship leader Yohan Rossel could only manage the seventh-fastest time and was 3.2s slower than Loubet.
