Elfyn Evans is the fourth new leader of Rally Sweden after four stages, setting a blistering time on the first repeated test to steal the lead from Toyota team-mate Kalle Rovanperä who fell to fourth.
On the morning pass of the stages running at the head of the field didn’t prove to be a major handicap, but in the afternoon the trend looks to be reversed.
Rovanperä leaked bags of time split-by-split on SS4, struggling to find a clean line on the road as first on the road. As well as the entire World Rally Championship field, the historic rally – running alongside the main event – has passed over the stage and the narrower track of those cars posed a real challenge for the former rally leader.
“In the morning it was OK but now it’s full s***,” Rovanperä said.
“It’s really, really difficult there is no line at all. I tried to follow the line, I tried to make my own line I tried everything but it doesn’t really work so well.”
But Rovanperä’s disadvantage was clear as each car entered the stage. Thierry Neuville was next on the road and beat Rovanperä by 7.3 seconds, producing what he described as a “close to perfect” stage.
“Yeah but the road is continuously getting faster,” said Neuville when it was put to him that his time against Rovanperä was impressive and as he also moved closer to the front with a new notional time for SS2.
“It’s every year the same with the historic cars in front the road is destroyed, no lines, the car is going everywhere.”
Even fifth on the road Evans found it tricky – “it didn’t feel great for us neither” – but his stage time was sensational: 16.3s faster than his team-mate to move him into a 5.1s lead.
“It’s so difficult in there, so messy,” Evans said. “I’m sure it was a nightmare for him [Rovanperä].”
Esapekka Lappi led the rally after SS2 and was sixth after SS3, and has continued to yo-yo up and down the leaderboard as he now finds himself back up to third.
He and Oliver Solberg were the last two cars onto the stage and profited; Lappi going second fastest and Solberg third.
But it’s Solberg that’s ahead, just 1.6s adrift of the new leader despite a scary moment at the flying finish.
“I came in perfect and then all of a sudden I was going to turn in and it didn’t turn, so I came over the finish board very fast,” Solberg explained.
“I did two mistakes where I lost a lot of time, so unnecessary.”
Lappi is 4.5s back, with a 0.6s advantage over Rovanperä.
Ott Tänak was another to be sympathetic towards Rovanperä’s thankless task as first car onto Friday afternoon’s stages, saying “it can only be a disaster at the front in conditions like this”, but the Hyundai driver can now sense an opportunity, only 0.1s behind Rovanperä and 5.2s back from the lead in fifth.
But he knows simply surviving these stages is difficult: “To manage the tires and the pace and everything is a real job at the moment.”
Hyundai team-mate Neuville is sixth, 6.2s down on leader Evans and a second behind Tänak.
Takamoto Katsuta became the latest driver to get lured in by the Rally Sweden snowbanks on SS4, running marginally wide on a medium-speed, sweeping left-hander very early on the stage and being swallowed by the road-side snow.
His GR Yaris Rally1 was stuck in the bank, but nearby spectators were quickly on hand to push it out and Katsuta was back on his way again.
He only lost around half a minute which was impressive in the circumstances but the incident did cost Katsuta seventh place to Gus Greensmith, but only by 0.5s.
“It was very, very bad condition I just lost the line and got stuck in the ditch,” Katsuta commented.
Greensmith felt the ruts on SS4 were “insane” and therefore didn’t concentrate on any kind of push.
His M-Sport team-mate Adrien Fourmaux – who needs a finish after a string of crashes on consecutive rallies of late – did pick up his pace on SS4 though even if he didn’t mean it, and got level with Katsuta in ninth overall. However a 10s penalty for being late to midday service by one minute means he sits 10s behind Katsuta.
“I’m quite happy with the time honestly, I didn’t expect that good time so it’s really good,” the Frenchman said.
SS4 times
1 Elfyn Evans/Scott Martin (Toyota) 8m20.0s
2 Esapekka Lappi/Janne Ferm (Toyota) +1.7s
3 Oliver Solberg/Elliott Edmondson (Hyundai) +2.4s
4 Ott Tänak/Martin Järveoja (Hyundai) +2.6s
5 Adrien Fourmaux/Alexandre Coria (M-Sport Ford) +6.7s
6 Thierry Neuville/Martijn Wydaeghe (Hyundai) +9.0s
7 Gus Greensmith/Jonas Andersson (M-Sport Ford) +16.0s
8 Kalle Rovanperä/Jonne Halttunen (Toyota) +16.3s
9 Ole Christian Veiby/Stig Rune Skjaermoen (Volkswagen) +20.2s
10 Takamoto Katsuta/Aaron Johnston (Toyota) +21.1s
Leading positions after SS4
1 Evans/Martin (Toyota) 37m54.5s
2 Solberg/Edmondson (Hyundai) +1.6s
3 Lappi/Ferm (Toyota) + 4.5s
4 Rovanperä/Halttunen (Toyota) +5.1s
5 Tänak/Järveoja (Hyundai) +5.2s
6 Neuville/Wydaeghe (Hyundai) +6.2s
7 Greensmith/Andersson (M-Sport Ford) +1m00.0s
8 Katsuta/Johnston (Toyota) +1m00.5s
9 Fourmaux/Coria (M-Sport Ford) +1m10.5s
10 Veiby/Skjaermoen (Volkswagen) +1m38.8s
