Craig Breen has extended his Rally Sweden lead over Ott Tänak but it was Thierry Neuville who was fastest on Saturday morning’s first stage.
Norrby kickstarted Saturday’s action and is a very fast stage where bravery and engine performance are rewarded.
Ott Tänak had said before the weekend began that Saturday’s stages would be “like a drag race” and was curious how his M-Sport Ford Puma Rally1 would perform in the engine stakes.
But the 2019 world champion wasn’t on the very hottest pace on SS9, dropping 3.4 seconds to the fastest time but more crucially two seconds to Breen – extending Breen’s overall lead to 4.6s.
“I’d like to but no, it’s difficult,” he said when asked if he was attacking Breen.
“I don’t have this kind of feeling to attack but we try to manage.”
Breen added: “The tea party is alive! Fair play Hyundai engine-wise have done a cracking job, that was really a power stage and we were in a safe rhythm.”
Esapekka Lappi meanwhile felt he was “too safe, I never touched the bank so just too slow” but he still gnawed 0.5s out of Tänak to lie 8.2s behind.
Neuville confirmed his Hyundai “feels better” today after suffering with understeer on Friday, particularly with compromised front aero, but he said he “couldn’t trust the braking”.
But the Hyundai driver was quicker than both the Toyotas ahead of him on the leaderboard, beating Kalle Rovanperä by 1.1s and Elfyn Evans by 2.9s.
Overall that means Evans’ advantage over fifth-placed Rovanperä is 2.8s, and Neuville is just 4.6s behind the world champion.
“You need a lot of top speed on this stage, it’s fifth gear all the time on the limiter,” said Rovanperä, who didn’t think he’d done a great stage but not a bad one either.
“I changed something on the setup today so I needed to get used to it a bit more.”
Pierre-Louis Loubet “struggled a bit with the grip which was very different from yesterday” and therefore summarized his SS9 as “not good driving from my side”.
The M-Sport Ford driver is in a lonely seventh place.
Takamoto Katsuta returned to action under super-rally regulations following his crash on Friday, running at the head of the field.
He hailed his Toyota mechanics for repairing his Yaris and set the seventh fastest time as first car on the road.
