Elfyn Evans has closed the Rally Japan lead gap to title rival Sébastien Ogier to only two seconds at the halfway point, while Adrien Fourmaux won two stages to bring himself into contention.
Fourmaux was flying on Saturday’s opening two tests to take Hyundai’s first stage wins of the rally, escaping the clutches of Sami Pajari and reducing the gap to the lead trio of Toyotas to only 9.4s at the midday regroup.
But the final stage of the loop, Mt. Kasagi, was bossed by Evans, who outpaced eight-time world champion Ogier by 5.4s to reduce the lead gap to only two seconds.
“[I was] not confident enough with the leaves,” admitted Ogier at the finish line. “[There are] a lot of leaves and pollution on the road. I will have to do better on the second loop.”
Both Ogier and Katsuta were cautious over pollution on the road, which allowed Evans to capitalize
Ogier dismissed any concerns that he could lose the lead on the next stage, which is a repeat of Mt. Kasagi. There are no route note crews allowed on the second pass of this stage, so none of the drivers will have updated information on pollution dragged onto the road by the support-category cars.
“There’s nothing to worry about, as long as there’s opportunity ahead,” said Ogier.
Katsuta had fallen from second to third on Saturday’s first stage, usurped by the charging Evans. He is still firmly in the lead fight, only 5.2s off the top spot.
Fourmaux admitted he was taking risks to catch the lead Toyota trio, his car visibly stepping out of line on several occasions.
“I really tried to catch the time if we can,” said Fourmaux. “I really optimised everything. It’s not without any risk, I cannot say that, but at least we are on the pace and we fight.
“Sometimes I have some big surprise in the car, in one place on a straight the car completely went crazy and I had full sideways at the beginning. At least it was really wide so it was OK.”
Pajari has fallen adrift of the top four, not helped by a sideways moment on the Ena test that pitched the rear-right of his GR Yaris Rally1 into an earth bank.
While most damage was cosmetic, it did take a section of exhaust off the rear of his car, noticeably increasing the amount of noise in his cockpit.
“It’s a bit tricky sometimes to listen to the pacenotes, it’s really loud inside,” said Pajari. “I need to trust my memory a little bit, so it’s not really helping.”
Pajari knocked a section of exhaust – along with some other cosmetic parts - off his GR Yaris Rally1 after impacting a bank
Ott Tänak is now over a minute adrift of the Toyota army in sixth place and was miles off the pace on stage 10, going 3.7s slower than Grégoire Munster’s Ford Puma.
“Still a long way to go, unfortunately,” said the 2019 world champion. His team-mate Thierry Neuville had already parked up and retired with a driveshaft failure after Saturday’s opening stage.
Neuville’s demise bolsters Kalle Rovanperä’s quest to pick up points after breaking a left-rear control arm on Friday, which cost him several minutes.
He’d been languishing in 17th place after Friday’s stages but has already climbed to 10th, with WRC2 leader Oliver Solberg 1m04.7s up the road in eighth.
Rovanperä’s climb up the leaderboard was assisted by Gus Greensmith, who suffered a brake system fault that left his Škoda Fabia RS Rally2 stranded just beyond the startline of stage nine.
