Elfyn Evans has once again taken time out of Thierry Neuville’s Croatia Rally lead, as dark clouds and rain begin to threaten the day’s proceedings.
The drivers returned to Mali Lipovec – Grdanjci for a second pass of the 11.93-mile route which kicked off Friday’s second leg, but the conditions weren’t as promising as they were a few hours prior, with plenty more dark clouds looming over the drivers.
Any sign of showers seemed to hold off on SS5, but Sébastien Ogier – who hasn’t taken a wet tire with him this afternoon – remained hopeful the rain would mostly stay away for the day’s final three stages.
“Of course, a more dirty road like expected,” he said.
“The biggest question is more how the weather is going to develop this afternoon. We still have some soft tires but we will see.”
Ogier took his fourth stage win of the day on SS5, and continued to reel in Takamoto Katsuta – who dropped a position on that stage – and just 12.1s separates the pair now.
At the front, Neuville elected to take two wet tires for the afternoon, a gamble that he’ll be hoping will come off as the afternoon goes on.
Following his complaints that the Hyundai wasn’t performing as much as it maybe could, the current rally leader was more optimistic about the feeling come the end of SS5.
“I felt a bit better in the car but we have two softs on the rear and the car was moving quite a lot,” he explained.
“The weather is very unstable this afternoon so we have to see, but I did what I could.”
Despite this renewed confidence, Evans managed to get the better of his Hyundai rival to start the second loop, cutting 2.4s out of Neuville to bring the lead gap down to 13.7s.
He also extended his advantage over Ott Tänak on the stage, and is now 7.1s ahead of the M-Sport driver.
Esapekka Lappi still holds fourth following his steady drive this morning, but like the rest of the drivers he too was unsure as to how the day could unfold with the potential change in weather.
“It was nice – and now the gravel crew marks made sense,” he said. “You can see from the tyre choice that we have no idea (what the weather will do).”
Katsuta dropped some time through the stage, and at the end he explained this was due to a spin, which he was able to recover from relatively quickly.
The Toyota driver is now sixth with that time loss, having been overtaken by Pierre-Louis Loubet.
