Kalle Rovanperä will carry a 36.3-second lead into the final day of Central European Rally, after Sébastien Ogier crashed out on Saturday morning.
When Ogier left the road and hit a tree due to a puncture on SS10, Rovanperä was released into a comfortable lead. Prior to Ogier’s accident, the two Toyotas had been separated by just 0.7s in Rovanperä’s favor.
Disengaged from battle, Rovanperä hasn’t needed to push for the rest of Saturday – saving himself instead for an all-important Super Sunday attack.
Rovanperä trails Ogier by 21 points in the championship but has currently reserved 25 for the rally win.
“It has been a good day,” said Rovanperä. “Obviously this afternoon was trickier feeling wise – you just want to go for it but it’s not so easy at the moment. Big day tomorrow: I think the fight is going to be really tight, so let’s see.”
Elfyn Evans is provisionally set to move back into the championship lead, but lost second place to fellow title contender Ott Tänak on Saturday afternoon.
Tänak has not been at-one with his package in CER, but drove out of his skin to get ahead of Evans and bank as many championship points as he can. The Hyundai driver is 8.4s up on Evans before Sunday’s four stages.
“I’m satisfied with my day, it was better than yesterday,” said Tänak. “I did everything I could, so yeah. This is everything I have – I have nothing more to give, and the rest we will see. Not sure I can be happy but we can be glad. ”
Evans, who lost 9.7s to Tänak over the afternoon, added: “Not good, obviously. I’m definitely going to try [and get second] but we’ve been missing some speed this afternoon, so let’s see.”
Two fastest stage times on Saturday afternoon represented a strong end to the leg for Takamoto Katsuta, who is on to repeat his fourth place finish here from 12 months ago.
The Japanese driver is in a spot of no man’s land on the leaderboard though – 13.6s down on team-mate Evans but 39.5s ahead of Adrien Fourmaux, who remains crestfallen to have lost so much time on SS5/6 Col de Jan on Friday.
Sami Pajari took a gamble and chose two wet tires for the afternoon loop; it didn’t work, but the Finn remains inside the top six ahead of world champion Thierry Neuville and Josh McErlean, who clipped a fence on the final stage of the day but got away with it.
Grégoire Munster restarted after damaging his rear suspension on Friday morning; two spins on Saturday’s first two stages his only drama.
Oliver Solberg remains the leading Rally2 car, but there was late drama in WRC2 as Alejandro Cachón slid wide and hit a bale that was protecting a building on the final stage of the day, breaking the rear-right suspension on his Toyota GR Yaris Rally2.
Léo Rossel therefore leads the category over Jan Černý with Filip Mareš rounding out the overnight top-three.
