World Rally Championship leader Elfyn Evans leads Rally Japan after Friday’s first six stages, with three Toyotas breaking clear of the pack.
Oliver Solberg took the early on the opening, brand-new Asuke test, but it was Toyota team-mate Evans who stormed to the front after the famous Isegami’s Tunnel stage – taking full advantage as the first car on the road in damp conditions to top the times by a strong 7.5 seconds.
The Welshman was again fastest on SS3 to begin the afternoon 17.7s clear of Solberg who slowed on SS3 with deer on the road, with reigning world champion Sébastien Ogier just half a second shy of the Swede.
As he had done in the morning, Solberg was the fastest through Asuke—feeling that the brand-new stage helped him fight his experience deficit – but just 2.6s covered the leading Toyotas through the eight mile stage.
Evans then repeated the symmetry by taking the stage win on Isegami’s Tunnel 2, but with the road dry his advantage was far less emphatic than in the morning. He beat Solberg by 1.1s with Ogier 2.8s adrift.
The pattern was broken on the loop-concluding Inabu / Shitara as Evans failed to repeat his stage win of the morning, but losing just half a second to Solberg means he holds an overnight lead of 15.7s.
Asked where he’d made the difference today, Evans cheekily grinned: “Road position, it’s always road position…”
He added: “It’s been an OK day for us overall, it’s been relatively clean. We’ve managed to keep a good rhythm going overall.”
Solberg was the quickest man over the afternoon loop, taking two seconds from Evans and 0.9s from Ogier to hold second spot by 1.4s over the nine-time champion.
“I’m a bit sad about today with the animals and everything,” Solberg reflected. “Instead of being 16 seconds it could have been 10 seconds, but that’s life.”
Ogier meanwhile felt he still had a way to go to get the most out of his GR Yaris Rally1.
“Not ideal [today] for sure,” he said. “We were hoping for better but we did what we could. We still have to work to find the sweet spot with the car, I was fighting a bit the whole day.”
Ogier has never been outside the top three stage times, but is yet to win one in Japan
The top three are covered by 17.1s with a 24.4s gap to Sami Pajari behind.
The Finn took fourth position from Thierry Neuville in the afternoon; the Belgian’s Hyundai not working anywhere nearly as well on hard tires as it had on soft compounds in the morning.
“[It’s the] same like yesterday on shakedown,” Neuville said after SS5. “Once we are on the hard, the balance is gone and the car is undrivable. Honestly we cannot do a lot – it’s the same story with this car since the very beginning. It’s not made to go fast in those conditions.”
Pajari, too, was struggling with understeer aboard his Toyota but stormed ahead of the 2024 world champion by 16.7s with a fastest time on the final stage of the day.
Takamoto Katsuta described his Friday as “one of the worst days I’ve had” in the WRC, lying sixth place and over a minute off the lead.
The Japanese driver endured a difficult first morning at his home round of the world championship, making a mistake and puncturing his rear-left tire on SS1 and going off-road briefly on SS3 – feeling he didn’t have enough information in his pacenotes.
Things didn’t really improve across the afternoon as he failed to set a stage time faster than fifth. However he is just 5.6s shy of Neuville’s fifth place.
“One of the worst days I’ve had, it’s very, very bad and I’m really frustrated but there’s a long way to go,” said a dejected Katsuta. “Try to recover from this.”
Adrien Fourmaux is seventh overnight, 12.5s behind Katsuta after a spin on SS2, with Hyundai team-mate Hayden Paddon 1m00.7s behind in eighth.
“For sure it could be a lot faster in the twisty sections, I’m just missing some technique form my side,” Paddon said. “I’d like to be a bit closer but hey today’s done, tomorrow’s a new day.”
Jon Armstrong is the leading M-Sport Ford driver in ninth overall, 23.9s behind Paddon’s i20, but not helped by intermittent intercom distortion in the afternoon.
“I think I’m just too sweaty, I keep breaking the intercom because of my sweat!” Armstrong said.
“It’s not so easy to drive with, we had it at the end of the last stage as well. I can still hear roughly but just not in a good rhythm because of that, and also the car’s moving around too much underneath me.”
Team-mate Josh McErlean had been 22.5s behind Armstrong but ended the day over two minutes adrift after stopping to change a puncture on Isegami’s Tunnel 2.
McErlean is down in 15th after stopping to change a puncture
“Just after the tunnel there was a cut right up the hill and there was a stone, and immediately it dropped pressure,” McErlean explained. “We had 13km left so we had no option but to stop.
“It’s been a difficult day to be honest – we knew it was going to be difficult coming here but we have to control what’s controllable now and keep focused going forward.”
WRC2 has been a fight between the most recent two Rally Japan winners: 2024 victor Nikolay Gryazin (Lancia) and 2025 victor Alejandro Cachón (Toyota).
Gryazin led his rival by just one second after five of the day’s six stages, but the Spaniard laid down a monster time on SS6 to grab the WRC2 lead, and 10th overall, by 8.3s.
“It felt really, really good,” Cachón said. “Some big moments! We made some changes to the car and in some places it was quite tricky; the car started to move, but the time is good so that’s the most important thing.”
