Elfyn Evans’ inroads into Sébastien Ogier’s lead and second-placed Oliver Solberg was undone on the final stage of Saturday morning at Rally Islas Canarias.
Back-to-back stage wins on SS9 and SS10 closed him to 4.9s behind Solberg and 10.3 off the lead, but the Welshman ended the morning 18.2s from the front.
Ogier led the event by 8.9s over Solberg after Friday’s competitive action, with Evans 16.4s off the lead in fourth place.
Immediately, the Welshman reeled in Sami Pajari on Saturday’s opening Maspalomas stage, recording his first fastest time of the weekend to take third place.
A shift in weather complicated the competition for the final two stages of the loop, with damp conditions, and occasional rainfall, mixing up the stage conditions.
Evans made it work for him on the former test, beating Solberg by 2.5s and Ogier – who admitted he could have gone faster but didn’t want to take the risk – by 4.4s.
However the Rally Sweden winner lost it all on the longest stage of the rally Moya – Gáldar. Evans was still third fastest but dropped eight seconds to Solberg who won the stage by a tenth from Ogier.
Ogier, though, was “a bit unlucky” to be affected by rainfall towards the end of his run; he had been 1.6s ahead of Solberg at the final split.
The reigning champion remains in the lead of the rally, now by 5.3s.
Pajari and championship leader Takamoto Katsuta have lost touch with their team-mates, with fourth-placed Pajari falling into the clutches of Katsuta.
But Katsuta spared his rival on SS11 when he went round a roundabout twice, instead of the mandatory once, which cost him valuable time.
“I just couldn’t see the exit of the roundabout. Stupid, but yeah,” Katsuta explained. He’s 5.8s behind Pajari and 49.8s off the lead.
Dani Sordo led the Hyundai trio through Friday, but Adrien Fourmaux destroyed his team-mates on Saturday morning; overturning a 2.8s overnight deficit into a 19.7s advantage.
That means Sordo slipped to seventh but remained ahead of Thierry Neuville, who is 7.1s behind in eighth.
“Adrien is pushing like hell, so it’s nice to see the Hyundai is working a little bit better,” said Sordo.
Josh McErlean and Jon Armstrong are ninth and 10th respectively for M-Sport Ford; Armstrong taking 9.5s from his team-mate throughout the morning’s three tests to trail by exactly 20s.
