Sébastien Ogier leads Rally Finland after the first full day, as torrential rain disrupted the leaderboard behind him.
A stage win on Friday’s opening test elevated Ogier and stand-in co-driver Julien Ingrassia into the lead – a position they held throughout the morning loop.
After the first repeated stage, Laukaa 2, Ogier was 5.4 seconds ahead of Sami Pajari, but the predicted rain arrived for SS7 and turned the leaderboard upside down.
With conditions getting progressively worse for every passing car, Adrien Fourmaux – starting seventh on the road – was the big loser as he lost 1m29.8s and fell to seventh.
Elfyn Evans, meanwhile, rocketed up to third and soon second place, ending the leg 16.3s behind Ogier who got the hammer down on SS8 in tricky conditions.
Pajari couldn’t live with Ogier on that test, ending the day 26.7s off the lead having been challenging the reigning world champion for first just a few hours earlier.
“It’s been a very good day – very tricky this afternoon, not so enjoyable I guess for anybody but it’s good that we managed to come out of that,” Ogier said.
Evans – who felt the conditions in SS8 were so crazy it wasn’t safe to run – added: “I think overall the morning wasn’t bad from our side, but the afternoon was a bit of a lottery in the end. Glad we managed to survive that. Of course we had it better on the second stage of the loop but probably had the worst of it on the next so that wasn’t easy.”
Pajari rued: “We lost the game for the win on that one stage. We were a bit unlucky. It’s one of those issues. The blower wasn’t working and we didn’t realize it, so we had full mist on the windscreen. It’s a big shame but still we are in a fight for the podium positions.”
Oliver Solberg is fourth – battling with water ingressing his Toyota through the roof vent on SS7 – sitting 14.6s behind Pajari and 41.3s off the lead, with M-Sport’s Mãrtiņš Sesks rounding out the top five.
Fourmaux finished the day sixth, 19.1s behind Sesks but a minute up the road from Josh McErlean. Takamoto Katsuta is eighth – curing his understeer issues for the afternoon but losing over two minutes on SS8 with a severely misted-up windshield.
Thierry Neuville clawed his way back up to ninth after losing 1m45s on the final stage before morning service when he carried too much speed into a corner, hit something and damaged the front-left of his Hyundai.
Robert Virves leads WRC2 by 13.5s over Roope Korhonen, and rounds out the top 10 overall.
