Andreas Mikkelsen crashed out of the Central European Rally on Friday morning’s stages, as his Hyundai team-mate Thierry Neuville moved in the lead overall.
Mikklesen was one of four drivers to lose hybrid boost during the morning, but that turned out to be the least of his worries. After a revised set-up gave him increased confidence on Thursday, he struggled for confidence on Friday’s lower-grip conditions before running wide and crashing through a fence on SS5. He and co-driver Torstein Eriksen quickly exited the steaming i20N, and with the car blocking the road, the stage was stopped.
After the previous stage, Mikkelsen had admitted: “I was too much on the careful side, not sure how grippy these cars are in these conditions – you can drive much faster than you think, so we just have to adjust.”
The top four overall are covered by 6.3 seconds, with overnight leader Sébastien Ogier is 2.7s down on the leading Hyundai. Neuville’s team-mate Ott Tänak is a further 0.9s back and the Toyota of Elfyn Evans lies fourth.
Toyota driver Ogier extended his advantage over Neuville to 3.2s on the day’s opening stage, a repeat of the previous night’s Klatovy test.
The top of the leaderboard closed up dramatically on SS4 Strašín, the event’s longest test at 16.6 miles. In tricky conditions with drizzle and mist in places making for a damp surface and changing grip levels, Evans went quickest despite claiming it “seemed like we weren’t using all the grip available”.
But SS5 Šumavské Hoštice had more opportunity for cuts as well as leaf cover making it difficult to read grip levels. Neuville and Tänak took advantage of being the first two cars on the road, with Tänak going fastest, 0.3s quicker than Neuville and 3.3s faster than Ogier.
“We had a bit more cuts so I tried to put a bit more dirt on the road,” admitted Neuville. “But overall, very tricky, lots of grip changes and we still struggle with the balance in those conditions.”
Ogier made light of an earlier moment where he ran wide at a junction and clipped the base of a tree. “Nothing happened – I lose a bit of time, of course,” he shrugged. But he reckoned conditions were against him on SS6, adding: “I think this one was a bit expected that it get quite dirty from the front cars. Some leaves. It was just a mistake from me on the last junction again where I lose a bit of time but otherwise it was OK stage.”
From being just 0.8s off the lead after SS4, Evans dropped another 6s or so on the next test. “It was just difficult. There was a section in the middle with the leaves where it seemed like you had no grip but the leaves are everywhere so you can’t read the road at all. So [I was] probably far too careful.”
Ogier had looked the dominant force in Czechia until stage five
Takamoto Katsuta lies fifth, 19.1s off the lead. Thankful for the organizers’ anti-cut devices keeping the earlier stages cleaner than they might otherwise have been, Katsuta had briefly been third overall after the day’s opening stage. He slipped back on the longer tests with a risk-free approach. “I just back off quite a lot but this is the plan for today,” he said.
The rest of the manufacturer entries all suffered hybrid problems to compound their difficulties finding grip on the stages.
Toyota’s fourth driver Sami Pajari was the first to lose his power boost, on the day’s opening stage, without apparent reason. But he appeared to be dealing with the lack of grip better than many others and lies sixth overall, 41.6s off the lead.
Mikkelsen and M-Sport duo Adrien Fourmaux and Grégoire Munster all lost their hybrid power after heavy landings from a jump midway through the long middle stage. But Fourmaux admitted his time loss was due more to a lack of feeling with the car. “It’s a nightmare, so I’m struggling,” he said after the 16-miler. “The stage is tricky but the car doesn’t help me.” He is seventh overall, 5.5s behind Pajari.
The manufacturer entries are completed by Munster, whose run through SS6 was interrupted by Mikkelsen’s accident. He had been 20s behind his team-mate after the previous stage. “I don’t manage to get the front turned in. If it’s not turning in, I cannot go on throttle,” he bemoaned.
Sami Pajari had been fastest on Friday's opening stage in the early splits until his hybrid system stopped working
In WRC2, a stunning run through the longest stage handed Nikolay Gryazin a lead of nearly 30s.
WRC2 championship leader Oliver Solberg isn’t scoring drivers’ points on this event, but was fastest of the Rally2 entries though Thursday’s stages. Solberg’s Škoda was pipped by Gryazin’s Citroën on Friday’s opener but remained ahead overall.
Asked for his reaction to Gryazin’s team-mate Yohan Rossel’s 30s time loss the previous night, after the Frenchman kept hold of his Chile win despite a further review of his crucial notional time by by the stewards, Solberg responded: “Karma is a b****, I guess.
“If they don’t want to give him any penalty because they think it was dusty or whatever they think in their heads, I don’t know, but apparently it was dusty and I was in the way apparently. So I think they got to look at that again and then maybe use some common sense, and then we’ll see. So it doesn’t matter for me. So I just have some fun, and that’s it.”
It was Gryazin who had the most fun through SS4, however. He went 8.6s faster than Solberg, and more than 20s faster than the rest of the WRC2 field. “To be honest, I also struggle here,” he said in surprise. “But I think it’s [the same] for everyone and I was not really risking, I just tried to be really smooth.”
It left him 7.5s ahead of Solberg overall, and 28.2 clear of a close battle for second among the WRC2 points-scoring drivers.
That is headed by Mikołaj Marczyk’s Škoda, 0.8s ahead of the Toyota of Filip Mareš. Rossel is languishing eighth in WRC2, more than a minute behind his team-mate, after struggling for grip. “I have no feeling in the car,” he said. “Very strange situation. I have no grip and I don’t understand the reaction of the car.”
