Thierry Neuville began Saturday’s Croatia Rally stages as he meant to go on, extending his advantage over Elfyn Evans by 4.8 seconds.
Evans brought the lead gap down to just 5.7s come the end of Friday’s stages, but couldn’t keep that run going on the first test of the second day.
Saturday started off with the longest stage of the day, a 14.76-mile pass of Kostanjevac – Petruš Vrh. But a lot of the drivers were caught out at the same corner towards the end of the route, with the likes of Ott Tänak, Takamoto Katsuta and Pierre-Louis Loubet having a very brief moment, coming close to a barrier.
There were no such problems for Neuville however, who emerged from the corner unscathed and now holds a lead of 10.5s.
“It was much more dirty than we expected,” he said.
“A couple of slides in there, but everything is under control.”
Tänak has extended his advantage to 15s over Esapekka Lappi in the battle for third.
Following his penalty for a seatbelt infringement on Friday, Sébastien Ogier’s morning didn’t get off to a straightforward start as he checked in one minute late.
Friday’s penalty dropped him to seventh, unraveling his hard work to claw back a couple of positions after his stage two puncture.
At the end of the first stage of Saturday he is now 25.6s behind Takamoto Katsuta.
The championship leader confirmed at the stage end there was a gremlin which required attention on his GR Yaris Rally1 that caused him to check in late.
“Yeah, we had an issue with the car so we had to fix it,” he explained.
Drivers were complaining of tough and unpredictable conditions across Friday’s eight stages, but for Kalle Rovanperä – who opened the road today – this was not the case on SS9.
“It was quite okay,” he said. “Let’s see how it was compared to the others, but the conditions on the stage are quite good.”
The Toyota driver is still eighth, but now just 5.2s behind Ogier.
