Toyota’s Croatia Rally weekend hit a roadblock on the second stage with punctures for both Sébastien Ogier and Kalle Rovanperä between the second and third split.
That hands Thierry Neuville the rally lead, as he has benefitted from Ogier’s troubles and now has a 13.9-second advantage over Elfyn Evans.
The incidents looked to have stemmed from a pothole in the road on the 15.95-mile Stojdraga – Hartje route, which brought both drivers to a halt to perform a tire change.
Both crews managed to swap the damaged wheel for a spare extremely rapidly, but still lost a good chunk of time in the process.
In Ogier’s case, that cost him the rally lead his win on the previous stage had given him.
Before the puncture he and Neuville were locked together, setting identical first split times, but come the third split that quickly increased to a 1m36.9s Neuville advantage.
At the finish, Ogier had managed to bring that down slightly, but only to 1m32.6s and he is now exactly 1m30s off the front in seventh.
However the championship leader felt there was little he could do to avoid the problem.
“I avoided the cuts as much as I could but it was just the compression that made the puncture,” he said. “What can I do?”
Rovanperä – who suffered the same fate – now sits last of the Rally1 drivers and 2m17.4s off the lead.
But it wasn’t a drama-free stage for the now-rally leader Neuville, as close to the finish he went straight at a chicane, sending him into a haybale and onto the grass.
No significant damage was done to his i20 N Rally1, with only some light bodywork coming off the car.
The previous stage threw up some surprises for the drivers, with a few explaining that the dirty conditions weren’t totally expected.
This was very much the same for Neuville on the second stage who said a tricky weekend is ahead.
“In a chicane I hit the bale and I immediately slowed down. Many, many surprises,” he explained.
“We will keep going but if it’s going to be tricky like this and hard to drive the car like this all weekend, it won’t be easy.”
Following his stall and potential steering trouble on the first stage, Ott Tänak said his morning doesn’t seem to be improving, and is already looking forward to the midday service despite sitting in third.
“We are not doing any better [than Ogier and Rovanperä], unfortunately,” he surmized.
“We will work our way back to service and hopefully we can get a better rhythm.”
Esapekka Lappi holds fourth overall by a comfortable 17.7s over Takamoto Katsuta.
The Hyundai driver wasn’t happy with his SS1 performance but was in better spirits this time around.
“It was a bit better than the first one, yeah,” he said.
“But still, I need to build up the confidence a bit on the dirt. It’s challenging – maybe I should find a new word for that because I guess everyone is saying the same.”
