Elfyn Evans has closed in on Rally Sweden leader Kalle Rovanperä to sit 1.2 seconds behind, as Thierry Neuville also closed in on Esapekka Lappi’s third place on SS12.
Rovanperä held a 4.8s advantage over Toyota team-mate Evans at Saturday’s midday service, having hit the front at Neuville’s expense on the day’s first stage.
Evans, who won the first pass of Brattby, was quickest again on the repeat for the afternoon’s first test – beating second-fastest Neuville by 1.7s and Rovanperä by 3.6s.
He wasn’t sure how competitive his run was though, arriving at the finish before Rovanperä’s time had been set.
“It’s one of those stages, I tried to keep in the clean line but if you don’t know if you’re pushing enough, very difficult to judge,” Evans said.
Rovanperä wasn’t too worried about the time loss though.
“For sure he [Evans] was fast here in the morning also and in these conditions it felt like a good stage, I cannot do much more than that,” said the rally leader.
“I will push on on the next stages, let’s see what we can do.”
Neuville is 13.2s down on Rovanperä overall but more crucially is now just 0.3s behind Lappi’s Toyota, threatening Toyota’s lockout of the podium places, as he beat Lappi by 2.8s on SS12.
But his feeling with his i20 N Rally1 wasn’t as strong as it was on Friday.
“It was OK, it’s not as good as it was yesterday so I can’t do more, it’s a bit risky if I want to push harder,” Neuville confessed. “The confidence is not 100% there so it’s difficult to match those times.”
Lappi meanwhile isn’t focusing on the leaderboard.
“If I start to concentrate on these things I will not stay on the road, my concentration needs to be on your own performance and that’s what we are doing,” he said.
Takamoto Katsuta has made yet more inroads into Oliver Solberg’s fifth place, nicking 4.4s from his Hyundai rival.
Katsuta described the conditions as “quite impossible” because “there is no line sometimes, and I just have to use some snowbanks because there were no lines. It was like a bobsleigh”.
The Next Generation Toyota driver is 27.7s behind Solberg overall, but the local driver isn’t stressed about Katsuta’s gains as he has now found a slightly better feeling with his car.
“It’s better, at least now the car is consistent so at least I can have some confidence,” Solberg, who had struggled with his pacenotes in the morning, said.
“But it’s very difficult conditions in there, so rough so I’m trying to protect what I have.”
Gus Greensmith edged M-Sport team-mate Adrien Fourmaux by the smallest of margins, 0.1s, on SS11 but that was pretty inconsequential in his quest to steal seventh place as the gap is still at 12.2s.
Despite getting the better of his rival, Greensmith was frustrated as he should’ve taken a larger chunk of time.
“I stalled at the start and lost five seconds,” he said. “It felt better, I tried and it felt like I was staying on the line better than yesterday.”
Fourmaux said: “[It] was not really nice to drive, unfortunately there was a lot of loose snow so I had no traction, it was just survival honestly.”
First on the road on Friday afternoon proved to be a big problem for Kalle Rovanperä and Thierry Neuville behind him, and it was Craig Breen and Ott Tänak’s turn to experience this on Saturday.
Breen described it as “pretty tricky in there”, and added: “I’m sure the historic boys had a ball of fun in their Volvos going sideways all over the place but the lines they left aren’t designed for these yokes.”
Tänak, who was 8.5s faster than Breen, said: “It’s harder work than in the gym, it’s a big job at the moment!”
While Tänak was seventh fastest on the stage, Breen in his Ford Puma Rally1 was outpaced by WRC2 drivers Jari Huttunen, Andreas Mikkelsen and Egon Kaur in less powerful Rally2 machinery.
Mikkelsen extended his WRC2 lead over Ole Christian Veiby to 7.5s.
SS12 times
1 Elfyn Evans/Scott Martin (Toyota) 6m18.8s
2 Thierry Neuville/Martijn Wydaeghe (Hyundai) +1.7s
3 Kalle Rovanperä/Jonne Halttunen (Toyota) +3.6s
4 Esapekka Lappi/Janne Ferm (Toyota) +4.5s
5 Takamoto Katsuta/Aaron Johnston (Toyota) +5.4s
6 Oliver Solberg/Elliott Edmondson (Hyundai) +9.8s
7 Ott Tänak/Martin Järveoja (Hyundai) +13.2s
8 Gus Greensmith/Jonas Andersson (M-Sport Ford) +13.6s
9 Adrien Fourmaux/Alexandre Coria (M-Sport Ford) +13.7s
10 Jari Huttunen/Mikko Lukka (M-Sport Ford) +18.5s
Leading positions after SS12
1 Rovanperä/Halttunen (Toyota) 1h30m20.6s
2 Evans/Martin (Toyota) +1.2s
3 Lappi/Ferm (Toyota) +12.9s
4 Neuville/Wydaeghe (Hyundai) +13.2s
5 Solberg/Edmondson (Hyundai) +57.7s
6 Katsuta/Johnston (Toyota) +1m25.4s
7 Fourmaux/Coria (M-Sport Ford) +2m12.0s
8 Greensmith/Andersson (M-Sport Ford) +2m24.2s
9 Andreas Mikkelsen/Torstein Eriksen (Škoda) +4m33.4s
10 Ole Christian Veiby/Stig Rune Skjaermoen (Volkswagen) +4m40.9s
