Oliver Solberg leads Rally Chile after Friday, with Elfyn Evans placed to outscore World Rally Championship rival Sami Pajari.
Solberg took the lead of the event on the first stage, only for Evans to immediately reply on SS2 and replace Solberg at the top of the leaderboard.
Although Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville won the stage, making it three stage winners from three, to round out the morning, Solberg was crucially quicker than Evans to head to service with a 2.3s advantage.
Overnight rain had made the stages wet and treacherous in the morning, but conditions dried out for the afternoon – giving those at the head of the running order less of an advantage.
Solberg was faultless however, beating Evans on all three of the repeated afternoon stages to grow his lead into double digits – despite tweaking his back over a jump on SS5, which is still recovering from a massive landing in Finland six weeks ago.
“We tried to keep the gap to Elfyn but not do a mistake and lose road position tomorrow, so I think it was an important afternoon to stay clean,” Solberg said. “Good day, I’m happy.”
Evans wasn’t overjoyed to have lost ground to his team-mate, but in terms of the championship it was a good day as Pajari ended the leg fifth.
“It sounds good when you put it like that but the afternoon was tougher than we expected,” Evans admitted, “not really delivering as much as we liked. Commitment seemed good but times weren’t really going with it, so hopefully it’ll be better tomorrow.”
Evans is now closer to third-placed Adrien Fourmaux than he is to overnight leader Solberg with a 7.9s buffer to the Hyundai behind, with Fourmaux producing a strong charge on the day’s final test to protect his third place from Sébastien Ogier.
Starting SS6 just 0.7s ahead of the world champion, Fourmaux outpaced Ogier by a second to hold a 1.7s overnight advantage, with Pajari a further 2s behind Ogier.
“It’s unbelievable,” Fourmaux smiled. “These cars are just so fantastic. To drive this car on those stages is just one of the best things in the world, it’s just so unbelievable. With all the crests and the jumps it’s so intense. I gave everything, so no regrets for tonight.”
Ogier added: “It’s all very close. There were some places I could have been a bit more committed but it’s OK, we tried.”
Neuville had a “disappointing” day to end it in sixth, revealing he suffered a “small damper leak” in the afternoon but fundamentally just wasn’t comfortable enough behind the wheel.
“At the end we are just not fast enough, there’s no excuse,” Neuville said. “When the feeling’s not there you can’t do anything.”
Neuville is 27.4s off the lead, but almost a minute and a half clear of seventh-placed Josh McErlean. The two M-Sport Fords are separated by just 2.4s and had been tied after SS4.
Jon Armstrong meanwhile has a 9.1s lead over Esapekka Lappi, who struggled for form across Friday.
“For tomorrow the road order would’ve been very important, and we lost that,” said a dejected Lappi, “so I think it’s going to be bigger losses tomorrow than today. I have no answer.”
