Elfyn Evans has climbed from fifth to first across Saturday morning at Rally Chile, excelling in the wet conditions to take the lead from Adrien Fourmaux.
Evans woke up on Saturday morning 13.1 seconds off the lead, but immediately closed to just 3.8s adrift after a strong drive on the morning’s opener.
That put the Toyota driver ahead of both his team-mates Sébastien Ogier and Sami Pajari into third, before he moved past Thierry Neuville into second on SS8 – narrowing Fourmaux’s rally lead to just nine tenths of a second.
On the longest stage of the rally, María Las Cruces (17.59 miles), Evans was again fastest of the frontrunners to move into the lead by 5.6s.
That advantage is held over Ogier, who was frustrated at himself for being too cautious on Saturday’s first stage, losing 15s to Evans’ similar GR Yaris Rally1. But he upped the pace as the loop progressed to jump ahead of both the Hyundais.
Fourmaux is 9.3s off the lead, 3.7s behind Ogier, feeling “the tires on the rear were giving up” on SS9. But Neuville was an even bigger loser – dropping over 20s on the final stage of the loop to fall to 18.8s off the summit.
“I just managed the tires, but obviously too much,” he said. “I was only managing the tires, that’s all I did. I was surprised about the wear on the stage before, but I managed too much.”
Sami Pajari has targeted a maiden WRC podium in Chile but has fallen back from the front four on Saturday morning, instead slipping into the clutches of his fellow Finn Kalle Rovanperä.
Rovanperä lost over a minute on Friday morning after hitting a bank and debeading a tire, but moved ahead of both Grégoire Munster and Takamoto Katsuta on Saturday morning – and was 53.8s faster than Pajari across the three-stage loop to close to 16.3s behind.
After his high-speed spin on Friday that cost him precious time in the morning without the front aero on his Ford Puma Rally1, Josh McErlean had made his way into 10th place overnight, but retired just a couple of miles into Saturday when his M-Sport car lost power.
“Three or four kilometers into the first stage of the morning the car cut out and we had to stop,” McErlean explained. “We tried many things to try and fix it but we’ve gone OTL and yeah, it’s strange what happened. We need to get back to service to see properly. Hopefully we get back going tomorrow, it’s a new day.”
Local Chilean driver Alberto Heller also retired his Puma with a similar-looking issue.
Ott Tänak meanwhile restarted after retiring on Friday’s final stage when his engine went “kaput”. He was fastest on both of the two stages he completed, but drove back to service before SS9 as he and Hyundai decided to save his car, and tires, for a Super Sunday assault.
In WRC2, Oliver Solberg remains on course to claim the championship tomorrow – leading Nikolay Gryazin by 29.0s.
