Elfyn Evans leads Rally Japan by 17.8 seconds over Sébastien Ogier after Saturday’s penultimate leg.
The World Rally Championship leader was being chased by Oliver Solberg; the Monte Carlo winner narrowed Evans’ lead by 5.7s across Saturday morning.
However Solberg made a mistake on the afternoon’s first test, SS10, when he ran wide, hit a pole and broke the rear-right suspension of his Toyota.
Evans dropped 5.5s on that stage as he slowed while passing his stricken team-mate, but his lead grew from 10.6s to 14.6s as Ogier moved up to second.
A second-fastest time on SS11 and stage win on SS12 helped Evans extend that advantage over Ogier to exactly 20 seconds before the two Fujioka superspecials where the Welshman came perilously close to an Armco barrier.
“Not a lot of margin spare there,” Evans confessed.
“Obviously [tomorrow] we just need to carry on on the same way,” he added. “It’s still a big day tomorrow so still got our work cut out.”
Ogier came to Japan with eyes only for victory, but said after SS12 that Evans was no longer catchable. At the end of SS14, he lamented the time he lost on Friday’s Isegami’s Tunnel stage where Evans destroyed everyone where road position had an impact.
“We came here to fight for the win, we said before the start, and we are not,” Ogier said. “Somehow we are having a very similar to Elfyn except this one stage yesterday, this 16.5s straightaway, that was tough and after that I never had the pace to fight back. I struggled with the tire basically.”
Sami Pajari is on track for a fifth WRC podium from seven events in 2026, lying third overall after Saturday with a comfortable 26.9s advantage ahead of team-mate Takamoto Katsuta.
Pajari was fastest of all on SS11 as well as the two superspecials, SS13 and SS14, on Saturday.
“I’m very pleased with the afternoon loop in general,” he said. “I was hoping to find a little bit more pace and that’s exactly what we did.”
After a difficult opening day at his home event, Katsuta was equally on better form on Saturday – immediately overtaking Thierry Neuville on the day’s first stage into fifth place.
Explaining his improvement, Katsuta – who again picked up advice from Ott Tänak – said: “I’m the same person, same car, just a reset – that’s all.”
Neuville dropped from fourth to sixth over the course of the leg, conceding fifth to Hyundai team-mate Adrien Fourmaux despite the Frenchman doing two donuts on Fujioka 1 when he only needed to do one.
Neuville however struggled with his i20 on Hankook’s hard tire but also with a malfunctioning handbrake.
“We never found anything to make it perfect – really struggling with the feeling, the feedback, the balance,” said Neuville. “Nothing is working and I can feel it’s not as fast as I would like to go, but every time I try to push it harder or change my driving style it doesn’t work.”
Neuville ended Saturday 11.8s behind Fourmaux but 1m24.8s up on his other team-mate Hayden Paddon, who occupies a lonely seventh place. Paddon’s advantage over eighth-placed Jon Armstrong’s M-Sport Ford is 51.9s.
“I’ve enjoyed driving the car, I’ve got used to it,” said Paddon. “We haven’t touched setup today, it was just a matter of me adapting to it. When you trust the car moving around it’s actually quite a lot of fun, so let’s see if we can build on that tomorrow.”
Josh McErlean remains outside the top 10 in 11th after stopping to change a tire on Friday. But like Fourmaux, he did two donuts on the first Fujioka stage instead of the required one.
“We reset, go again tomorrow and try to find some improvements, both me and the car,” McErlean reflected.
Nikolay Gryazin and Alejandro Cachón’s relentless fight to win WRC2 continued on Saturday; the Lancia driver leading Cachón’s Toyota by just 5.7s having started the day 8.3s behind.
“I’m glad we are going into Sunday still in fight mode, no need to protect our place,” said Gryazin. “For sure it will be tight, really tight.”
