World Rally Championship leader Elfyn Evans has crashed out of Rally of Portugal on Friday’s penultimate stage.
It had been a difficult event for the Croatia Rally winner thus far, faced with opening the road and battling with a car he wasn’t completely comfortable with.
Before SS7 Mortágua, the Toyota driver was sixth overall, 46.6 seconds behind rally leading team-mate Kalle Rovanperä.
But he went off 8.5 miles onto 11.2-mile stage.
Both he and co-driver Scott Martin are confirmed to be OK.
Out front, Rovanperä has extended his rally lead from 2.9s to 14.2s after a difficult stage for Dani Sordo who overshot a junction.
That cost the Hyundai driver 11.3s to Rovanperä and means he’s now closer to third place than first -allowing Rovanperä to breathe a little easier.
“We make a really bad stage,” Sordo rued. “The rear was moving a lot and I didn’t have a lot of confidence. We make a small mistake and we lost a little bit of time, but we were bad in here.”
Things switched around behind too as Thierry Neuville lost his grip on third place to both team-mate Esapekka Lappi and M-Sport’s Pierre-Louis Loubet.
Lappi jumped up two places after setting his second fastest time of the weekend. Overall he’s now 0.5s ahead of Loubet, 0.3s clear of Loubet.
“This was my weak stage,” Lappi said. “I haven’t done it with these cars so I really tried to learn it. I was committed.”
Ott Tänak climbs into the top six following Evans’ retirement, but it’s a distant sixth with a 1m07.4s deficit to rally leader Rovanperä.
