Kalle Rovanperä and Elfyn Evans are separated by only 0.1 seconds after 11 stages of Rally Poland, with both Toyota drivers usurping erstwhile rally leader Andreas Mikkelsen on Saturday morning.
Reigning world champion Rovanperä was fastest out of the blocks, winning both the interrupted Świętajno and Gołdap tests.
Rovanperä’s last-minute call-up as a stand-in for Sébastien Ogier, who’d been involved in a road traffic accident while recceing the Gołdap stage on Tuesday, was still having consequences.
Mikkelsen hit back with a stage win on Czarne and Evans also carved 1.1s out of his team-mate on the same test, with Rovanperä admitting he was scared as a result of pushing without proper preparation.
“That’s s***,” said Rovanperä of his stage time on Czarne. “It’s not enough. It could be much quicker.
“With this preparation it’s so f***ing scary. I don’t like it at all, fifth gear all the time and you are not sure about the places. It’s not nice but we try.”
Mikkelsen came to the end of Czarne with plenty of greenery hanging from his car and in ducts, indicating how hard he’d been pushing to reclaim the lead: “The pace is high, we’re trying hard,” he said. “I was flat out. I was a bit careful in the last three or four corners, that’s only place I felt we left any time.”
Adrien Fourmaux is beginning to lose touch with the lead trio and is 13.5s behind Mikkelsen – with an identical gap to new M-Sport team-mate Mārtiņš Sesks behind in the non-hybrid Ford Puma.
Thierry Neuville has dispossessed Grégoire Munster of sixth position and is targeting Sesks’ fifth place before the end of Saturday, given the extra points and better road position it will be provide for Sunday. But Sesks is defending his position valiantly despite the power deficit, dropping only five seconds to Neuville across Saturday morning’s three stages.
Takamoto Katsuta is now 10.6s behind Munster in eighth place, while Ott Tänak is back underway after hitting a deer and retiring on Friday.
Sami Pajari looks in control of the WRC2 class. Victory would put him only three points short of championship leader Yohan Rossel
Sami Pajari’s path to WRC2 victory has become easier as his closest rival Kajetan Kajetanowicz damaged his Škoda Fabia RS Rally2 on the Czarne test.
Three-time European champion Kajetanowicz put his car on two wheels at the apex of a right-hander, causing his car to drift wide and hit a rock. He limped to the end of the stage but lost several minutes.
“It’s life. It’s rally,” he said. “When you are pushing, it happens. We went off, we hit something and broke a [control] arm. We stopped two times on the stage – we’re always fighting to the end.”
Kajetanowicz’s woe promoted Robert Virves to second in class, though he faces intense pressure from Oliver Solberg.
