Elfyn Evans extended his Rally Sweden lead to 1.9 seconds over Friday morning’s stages of Rally Sweden but his closest challenger is now Adrien Fourmaux, who won the morning’s final two tests.
Evans held a 0.5s advantage over Ott Tänak and Kalle Rovanperä overnight, after wining Thursday’s superspecial stage. He extended that to 2.7s over Tänak by winning the Friday morning opener, the 17.5 miles of SS2 Bygdsiljum, before Fourmaux hit back as his Hyundai team-mates struggled.
First on the road, Evans had to clear loose snow in some places on SS2 and SS3 Andersvattnet, but also benefited from a mostly clearer road with firmer ice and no snowbank debris. He was second fastest to Fourmaux on both the 12.75-mile Andersvattnet and the shorter Bäck that completed the morning loop to consolidate his lead.
“It’s been OK,” reported the Toyota driver at the end of the loop. “Quite difficult to read the grip, especially in here as well. Maybe not carrying the speed as well as I would like.”
Fourmaux was disappointed with his effort through the morning’s opener, struggling with a lack of traction as he dropped 6.4s to Evans. But he was much more impressive thereafter, winning the next two tests by 1.8s and 3.9s respectively.
“I’m really pleased on how we managed the tires today,” said Fourmaux. “I had a really clean stage on the last two stages – I needed to find the pace a bit on the first one and after that I’m really, really pleased with the pace. And that’s such good fun to drive on the good roads, and the conditions this morning are just perfect.”
Fourmaux closed in on rally leader Evans over the morning's final two stages
Fourmaux did not experience the same understeer issues that hampered the other Hyundais of Tänak and Thierry Neuville. Tänak was able to manage it better than Neuville, going third fastest on both SS2 and SS3 to hold on to third position, 6.2s behind leader Evans. “It’s like driving a snow drift rally, so grip is obviously very, very low,” he said.
Neuville is a further 13.3s back in sixth position after reporting “massive understeer”. After the morning’s opener he said: “I am flat out everywhere and turning and the car just goes straight.” Setup tweaks on the road sections slightly improved the situation but he was “still fighting a lot with the car”, and also reported being slowed by a marshal on SS4.
The Toyotas of Takamoto Katsuta and Kalle Rovanperä occupy fourth and fifth positions at lunchtime service. Katsuta was in the top three on every stage of the morning and is just 2.2s behind Tänak. “Much, much better than yesterday,” he smiled, later adding: “It feels good, no drama, no pushing, just steady.”
Rovanperä, on the other hand, cut a much more frustrated figure, still struggling to match his driving style to the characteristics of the new Hanook tires. Sixth on both SS2 and SS3, he managed fourth on the morning’s final test to lie some 18s off the pace overall, nearly 10s down on Katsuta.
“I took a little bit different approach for the setup for this race, trying to compensate these new tires,” Rovanperä explained. “It doesn’t work so well at the moment, so we need to try to figure out something in the service.”
M-Sport drivers Josh McErlean and Mārtiņš Sesks lie seventh and eighth. McErlean, 19.9s down on Neuville, was particularly impressive given his lack of experience in the car and on the event. “It’s been quite surprising,” he admitted, “because we’ve got so little experience on this surface and everything seems quite comfortable. So maybe we can step it up a bit more to see how it is.”
Both outpaced team-mate Grégoire Munster who was struggling to get his Puma rotated before setup tweaks improved the situation. “Maybe now we went a bit too far in that [other] direction, but at least we know, we’re learning,” said a rather relieved Munster, who sits 10th, just over a minute off the ultimate pace.
Munster is 4.4s behind ninth placed Sami Pajari, who dropped more than half a minute on the morning’s opener when a tire came off the rim after brushing a snowbank. Pajari had been setting impressive split times before the incident but lost further time as road conditions worsened on the following stages.
In WRC2, Oliver Soberg was fastest through all of the Friday morning stages to extend his lead to 19.2s over Roope Korhonen.
