Takamoto Katsuta has restored a Toyota 1-2 at the head of the Croatia Rally field after stage 10, usurping Thierry Neuville’s Hyundai for second place.
The pair had been separated by only 0.9s at the start of Saturday’s action and initially Neuville was quicker on the racetrack-like Platak test.
But Katsuta struck back with intent on the more technical and far more polluted Ravna Gora – Skrad test – the same stage from which Neuville crashed out of the lead in 2023.
When told he’d gone more than five seconds faster than Neuville on SS10, Katsuta’s reaction was one of disbelief.
“No way!” he replied, brimming with positivity. “I enjoyed a lot this stage. A lot of pollution but it was good.”
The mood in Neuville’s car was at the opposite end of the scale.
Neuville struggled in sections with high levels of pollution on the road
“He was taking a lot of risk then,” Neuville said of Katsuta’s SS10 run. “It’s very, very dirty. I had not really that info about so much dirt in the stage. Lots of surprises in there but I kept it clean and calm.”
Judging grip was the running theme of the morning, with several drivers complaining on stage nine that there’d been more pollution on the road than anticipated.
But it wasn’t a universal experience: WRC2 leader Yohan Rossel was surprised he’d been able to push.
“I didn’t expect so much grip to be honest,” he said, defying expectations. His lead in WRC2 over Lancia team-mate Nikolay Gryazin has increased to 28.1s.
Katsuta’s gap to overall rally leader Sami Pajari has narrowed to 13.5s after the first two stages of the Saturday morning loop, though his advantage over Neuville is a slim 1.2s.
Hayden Paddon is over a minute behind Neuville in fourth place, while Adrien Fourmaux in the third Hyundai holds fifth, now 33.9s behind his part-time team-mate.
Josh McErlean’s run through Ravna Gora – Skrad was interrupted by a small fire. Smoke had begun to waft into the cockpit of his Ford Puma, so he pulled over and deployed an extinguisher towards the floor, in the area near the gearbox.
“We were talking to the team to see what to do,” said McErlean of his decision to stop. “We’re not sure what it is.”
All three drivers who crashed out of the opening day – Oliver Solberg, Elfyn Evans and Jon Armstrong – returned for Saturday’s stages.
Calle Carlberg is already looking good for two-for-two in Junior WRC – but Ali Türkkan has put the hammer down to try and stop him
Solberg capitalized on having the cleanest road conditions to win the opening two tests; his SS9 win was dominant, besting Evans by 7.3s and rally leader Pajari by 15s.
Calle Carlberg holds the lead in Junior WRC but the Rally Sweden winner now has a fight on his hands, with Ali Türkkan turning in a dominant performance on Saturday’s opening test.
The reigning Junior European Rally Champion had over half a minute in hand heading into Saturday but Türkkan was a whopping 11.7s faster on the first pass of Platak.
