World Rally Championship title contender Elfyn Evans has put in extra effort to prepare for the circuit stages on this year’s Monza Rally having struggled on them in last year’s season finale.
The 2020 Monza Rally took place in horrendous weather conditions which made the circuit stages especially difficult.
Evans could afford to take less risks last year having gone into the event leading the championship by 14 points, but he feels the circuit tests were one of the weaker parts of his rally (despite his rally ending on a mountain test), so that’s something he is keen to rectify this year.
“I think everything was fine last year but in a way this was a place where perhaps maybe we weren’t under pressure at the same time to really take the ultimate risk last year in all that horrible condition because we ultimately had a lot to lose.” Evans told DirtFish.
“I’m talking more there about the circuit. When we got to the mountain stages it all seemed to flow better last year, but just that circuit stuff, it wasn’t let’s say my strongest part of the rally last year.
“Of course we just try and focus on trying to be better in that area really and see what we can do.
“There’s not an awful lot you can do to prepare for that physically with the car or yourself, you can only study it on the videos and see. Obviously, the stages are a different format this year but still similar.”
Usually, drivers would attempt to learn the stages from the maps before carrying out the recce, but because of the changes made for this year, Evans believes it would actually be “more dangerous” to learn them in advance.
“Normally you do the preparation and then see how it goes, if you decide to use your notes or not or what have you. And you’d normally just react to that on the recce basically,” he said.
“But yeah, you can’t learn them because that would almost be more dangerous as where you went left last year you turn right and all these things.
“So it’s almost better to not try and memorise the whole way as you’re going to get caught out. It’s really important to listen really on the day.”
Despite the difficult driving conditions on the circuit stages last year, which were made worse by the gravel elements, some gravel still features on the stages – especially on the powerstage – and this is something that has surprised the Toyota driver.
“The maps of last year were showing quite clearly the gravel bits and OK we do have percentage again this year, there is gravel, but it doesn’t seem as much.
“The powerstage is actually the one which has a bit of a higher percentage, so the rest seemed to have a little bit less, but of course if you combine what we had last year with all that horrific weather, it was a mudbath really.
“It’s surprising really they’ve gone back to use the gravel bits because you would have thought, let’s say, they would have been able to say that wasn’t a roaring success from last year.”
Evans will begin the 2021 Monza Rally 17 points behind Toyota team-mate Sébastien Ogier, needing to finish no lower than third to stand any chance of winning the championship.
