Elfyn Evans slipped off the road on SS11 and surrendered third place on the Monte Carlo Rally, as Sébastien Ogier moved into the lead of the event.
Ogier and Sébastien Loeb shared the lead of the rally before the stage, but Evans had been lurking just 9.3 seconds behind in third and ready to strike should his rivals hit problems.
Yet it was Evans that ran into strife, missing his braking on a dry, tight, right-hand bend, pulling the handbrake to try and scrub off speed but nudging the inside bank and agonizingly slipping off the other side of the stage.
Perilously, Evans’ Toyota GR Yaris was in between two sections of the stage on a steep elevation, and that made it complicated for him and co-driver Scott Martin – assisted by spectators – to pull the car back onto the stage.
The test was therefore red flagged after Loeb had completed it so that Evans’ car could be rescued and moved from its precarious position.
The drama moved M-Sport’s Craig Breen onto the podium, albeit over a minute down on the two leaders.
Ogier won the stage to open up a 5.4s cushion over Loeb, but both of the two multiple world champions avoided the drama that befell Evans and several others.
“It’s never easy to go through these sections with the crossed tires, it felt horrible the whole stage but we were just surviving,” said Ogier. “I feel sorry for Elfyn now, it’s a shame for the team.”
Loeb added: “It’s not easy to drive with two studs and two slicks, the car is moving everywhere. I tried to push but Ogier was a bit faster.”
Saint-Geniez / Thoard was the first stage this weekend to feature sections of snow and ice in the mid-part of the test. Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville and Ott Tänak gambled by not taking any studded tires and it didn’t pay off.
While they were quicker on the dry asphalt sections, both lost all of that advantage and more when the conditions became sketchy.
Neuville tipped his i20 N Rally1 into a costly spin at a hairpin, but things were far worse for team-mate Tänak – who locked up the brakes on the ice and came perilously close to falling down the mountain, before clouting a bank with the front of his Hyundai.
His windshield was completed covered in liquid as the car reached the end of the stage and Tänak drove off, electing not to explain what happened to the stage-end reporter.
But more pertinently, his front-right tire appeared to be flat and his spare wheel is already punctured.
The morning’s big mover was Kalle Rovanperä. He produced a strong charge, beginning the loop in ninth overall and ending it in fifth.
That was aided by problems for Evans, Tänak, Neuville, Gus Greensmith and Oliver Solberg across the morning, but Rovanperä’s pace has been impressive and he relieved Takamoto Katsuta of sixth place on SS11.
Neuville’s Hyundai is now just 15.6s ahead too, but Neuville reckoned his tire choice would’ve been the right one had he not been nursing a “mechanical” problem.
“I honestly think it would have been the best, without the problem I think it would have been a good stage but I had to drive at 75%,” he said.
Greensmith was another in the wars. The M-Sport driver picked up a puncture and reported a misfire on the previous test and missed his start time for SS11.
He did eventually take the start, but was handed a notional time of 14m30.9s as he began after Loeb, meaning he was instructed not to drive at competitive speeds.
Solberg, who was supposed to be starting at the head of the field but was the fifth car onto the test following his trip down a bank on the previous stage, completed SS11 without issue but is nowhere in the overall classification now having lost over half an hour with his crash.
SS11 times
1 Sébastien Ogier/Benjamin Veillas (Toyota) 14m17.1s
2 Kalle Rovanperä/Jonne Halttunen (Toyota) +4.5s
3 Craig Breen/Paul Nagle (M-Sport Ford) +4.9s
4 Sébastien Loeb/Isabelle Galmiche (M-Sport Ford) +5.4s
5 Gus Greensmith/Jonas Andersson (M-Sport Ford) +13.8s
6 Takamoto Katsuta/Aaron Johnston (Toyota) +18.6s
Leading positions after SS11
1 Ogier/Veillas (Toyota) 1h55m59.1s
2 Loeb/Galmiche (M-Sport Ford) +5.4s
3 Breen/Nagle (M-Sport Ford) +1m07.5s
4 Thierry Neuville/Martijn Waydaeghe (Hyundai) +1m53.8s
5 Rovanperä/Halttunen (Toyota) +2m09.4s
6 Katsuta/Johnston (Toyota) +2m16.2s
7 Ott Tänak/Martin Järveoja (Hyundai) +3m05.7s
8 Greensmith/Andersson (M-Sport Ford) +5m57.5s
9 Andreas Mikkelsen/Torstein Eriksen (Škoda Fabia Rally2 evo) +6m17.1s
10 Marco Bulacia/Marcelo der Ohannesian (Škoda Fabia Rally2 evo) +7m36.5s
