Thierry Neuville has taken an important chunk of time out of Craig Breen on the fifth stage of the Ypres Rally, stopping the clocks 2.1 seconds faster than his Hyundai team-mate.
Neuville and Breen headed into the repeat loop of stages split by just 0.4s at the front, but home favorite Neuville took his second stage win in a row to build a healthier lead advantage.
Breen is sounding confident of a fightback though, admitting Reninge – Vleteren is “the trickiest stage of the loop for me”.
He elaborated: “So many of these little concrete limps everywhere and for sure I’m dropping time, but I like these next two.”
Hyundai has so far had the edge on Toyota in Belgium, but the Toyota drivers are understood to have made some set-up changes to the Yaris WRC in service for the repeat loop of Friday’s stages.
Both Elfyn Evans and Sébastien Ogier felt they had more grip on SS5, but that was potentially more a circumstance of the road evolving than the characteristics of their car changing.
“We are trying things, this morning was definitely not the best loop,” said sixth-placed Ogier.
“In general I feel that the dust is a bit away so I have to try and get feeling.”
Ogier was the slowest of the three works Toyotas, despite setting the fastest time on the opening split, while Kalle Rovanperä pipped Evans by 0.2s to lose four seconds to stage winner Neuville.
“I was still lacking a bit of confidence in the beginning, I was a bit too careful but towards the end I was getting a bit more of a feel for it,” Rovanperä assessed.
The Rally Estonia winner set an identical time to Ott Tänak on SS5, meaning third-placed Tänak – who admitted he’s “trying to learn still” – extended his advantage over Evans to just a single second. Rovanperä meanwhile is 5.1s behind his team-mate Evans in fifth position.
Photo: Toyota Gazoo Racing
Takamoto Katsuta finds himself a lonely seventh overall, 20.7s behind Ogier but 58.4s ahead of 2C Competition’s Pierre-Louis Loubet.
Katsuta, a star of the first half of the WRC season, is building up his confidence in these unique conditions and is competing with a new co-driver – Keaton Williams – as Dan Barritt continues to recover from his Estonia injury at home.
Loubet did reach the stop control sporting some rear-left damage though, missing a side window and carrying a big scuff on one of his rims.
“For the screen I don’t knowm we lose [it] before,” Loubet explained. “And for the rim in a fast section I hit something but I was in the line, I think something was in the road.”
SS5 times
1 Thierry Neuville/Martijn Wydaeghe (Hyundai) 7m49.0s
2 Craig Breen/Paul Nagle (Hyundai) +2.1s
3 Kalle Rovanperä/Jonne Halttunen (Toyota) +4.0s
4 Ott Tänak/Martin Järveoja (Hyundai) +4.0s
5 Elfyn Evans/Scott Martin (Toyota) +4.2s
6 Sébastien Ogier/Julien Ingrassia (Toyota) +4.7s
Leading positions after SS5
1 Neuville/Wydaeghe 42m31.2s
2 Breen/Nagle +2.5s
3 Tänak/Järveoja +20.4s
4 Evans/Martin +21.4s
5 Rovanperä/Halttunen +26.5s
6 Ogier/Ingrassia +35.0s
7 Takamoto Katsuta/Keaton Williams (Toyota) +55.7s
8 Pierre-Louis Loubet/Florian Haut-Labourdette (2C Competition Hyundai) +1m54.1s
9 Teemu Suninen/Mikko Markkula (M-Sport Ford) +3m27.9s
10 Yohan Rossel/Alexandre Coria (Citroën) +3m31.6s
