Evans into Monte lead as Neuville goes off

Thierry Neuville loses two minutes on a dramatic SS6 where team-mate Ott Tänak also hits trouble

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Elfyn Evans moved into the lead of the Monte Carlo Rally on a dramatic Friday morning as overnight leader Thierry Neuville and his Hyundai team-mate Ott Tänak both went off the road and picked up damage.

The early runners was disadvantaged on the first stage of the loop with icy patches on the road gradually melting as temperatures rose. Despite being only ninth fastest through the 11.6-mile stage, Evans edged in front of Neuville to take the lead of the rally after outpacing him by 2.8 seconds.

But the main drama was to come later in the morning. After SS5 was cancelled to allow a spectator to receive medical assistance, tricky conditions on SS6 caught several out.

First into the stage, Neuville could not slow his i20 N enough for a downhill hairpin midway through the stage and ran off the road. The car dipped into a small ditch which ripped his left-rear wheel off and left the world champion limping through the rest of the stage. He lost nearly two minutes before effecting temporary repairs on the road section back to service.

“I think we paid the price of not having enough experience with the tire for the dry section,” reckoned Neuville. “It felt like the tire was quite stable and suddenly I just lost the brake efficiency, and there was a ditch so we damaged the rear.”

He wasn’t the only driver in strife. Third overnight, Sébastien Ogier closed to within 4s of the lead on Friday morning’s opener but ran wide and clipped a bank on SS6. He got away with the moment and even managed to go 2.5s faster than team-mate Evans to lie in second overall, just 1.5s down on the leader. “We expected a little bit better but actually there is still some big grip changes in there,” reported Ogier.

Tänak also ran wide through a left-hander, dropping his car into a ditch. While he was able to power out of it, the rear end had swiped a telegraph pole, ripping off most of the rear bodywork. Mechanically, the car was fine and Tänak was able to complete the stage, losing little more than 10s to the lead Toyotas and dropping to fifth. He knew he’d been lucky, smiling: “There is a lot missing but OK, I take that, I’m happy to be here.”

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Tänak's Hyundai was left looking in a sorry state

Evans’s run had been comparatively trouble free but the new leader felt he could have gone quicker with conditions changing so much since the gravel crews had been able to check the roads. “You have to drive a little bit with your eyes, but when it’s in and out of the shade it’s difficult to trust them,” he explained.

Adrien Fourmaux was fastest through SS6 to climb into third overall, 6.2s off the lead. “We had a really, really good stage,” he said. “I was really, really enjoying. I had some good fun, I took it quite clean and no mistakes so really happy.”

Star of the morning though was his former team-mate at M-Sport, Grégoire Munster. A brave tire choice helped Munster to second fastest times through both stages. While others ran studded tires on all four wheels through SS4, Munster crossed his with a pair of un-studded tires. He then ditched the studs altogether on SS6 and survived a tricky icy section towards the end to stop the clocks 4.2s shy of Fourmaux.

Visibly shaking at stage-end, Munster said: “It was crazy. I pushed like hell but one or two times it was really on the limit. But we made a tire choice and we were the only ones with this one so we had to try.” His reward is to lie fourth overall in the rally, 16.3s behind Fourmaux and 0.5s ahead of Tänak.

After a disappointing Thursday night, Kalle Rovanperä took full advantage of his road position to go fastest through SS4, but a “safe run” through SS6 was only fifth fastest, leaving him sixth overall, just 0.1s behind Tänak.

Rovanperä’s Toyota team-mate Takamoto Katsuta and Sami Pajari, who ran wide at the same place as Ogier are seventh and eighth. Katsuta is 51.9s behind Rovanperä, with Pajari another half-minute further back, 2.9s ahead of Neuville who has fallen to ninth.

The leading Rally2 car of Nikolay Gryazin completes the top 10, with Rally1 debutant Josh McErlean lying 12th overall.

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