Elfyn Evans has grabbed the lead of Rally Sweden from Oliver Solberg, who suffered a stall on Friday’s opening stage.
Evans was due to overhaul Solberg in the classification anyway – the Swede’s mishap just extended his stage advantage to 9.4s, as he now leads the rally by 5.6s.
Mãrtiņš Sesks meanwhile lost over seven minutes as he stopped to change both front tires on his M-Sport Ford Puma, and then suffered with a fogged windshield once he got going.
Solberg carried a 3.8s advantage into Friday after topping Thursday night’s Umeå stage, but running first on the road probably didn’t help him on SS2 as he began to leak time.
“[The] beginning of the stage was not so bad and then there was a lot of loose snow off-line so I didn’t have the confidence to take too many risks,” Solberg said. “Then the stall, I don’t know what happened – it just died.”
The world championship leader slid to second, with just a 0.9s advantage over Takamoto Katsuta who was second fastest on Bygdsiljum. Sami Pajari felt he was too clean but completes a Toyota top-four with the third best time on SS2, lying 8.7s off the lead.
Thierry Neuville is the only driver in the same zip code as the Toyotas as he outpaced Solberg on SS2.
“Let’s say I was trying, just a bit struggling with the balance,” Neuville commente,d “but overall I think it’s something we can fine-tune for the weekend.
“Unfortunately we always start like this, fine-tuning the car before we’ve got something fast, but at least we’ve got a feeling for it and a way to go.”
Hyundai team-mate Adrien Fourmaux is 13.5s adrift overall having lost over 20s on SS2 – and wasn’t his usual chatty self at stage-end.
“I’m quite happy with what I’ve done,” Fourmaux stated. “Nothing else to say.”
Esapekka Lappi splits the pair in sixth overall, 19.8s off the lead with the sixth-best stage time.
“I did what I could with my skills, but yeah the grip is really poor it seems,” said Lappi. “It’s impossible to push, it’s too risky.”
Sesks' Sweden has not started well, but it could have been worse...
M-Sport didn’t have a particularly strong SS2, with Jon Armstrong collecting a rear-right puncture, Josh McErlean struggling with his car setup and Sesks dropping those seven minutes with two tire changes.
“I don’t know how you can get a double puncture in the front, how is that even possible on a road like this?” Sesks said. “One of the tires just exploded on a straight line. The other front was also losing pressure. I really don’t know.
“And then half of the stage we couldn’t see because we were snowy and we were humid. But it could have been worse, we could have rolled!”
Passing his team-mate on the stage, Armstrong added: “It looks as if Mãrtiņš had a puncture too, so maybe we need to rethink our strategy.”
McErlean is eighth overall, 54.5s off the lead but 16.9s clear of Armstrong who lost over 40s on Thursday’s opening stage.
Toyota customer Lorenzo Bertelli also picked up a rear-left puncture which damaged his brake line, but he elected not to stop and change it.
