Elfyn Evans has responded to Thierry Neuville on the final stage of Friday’s morning loop, shrinking the gap by 0.3 seconds to head into the service park 16.1s shy of the lead.
Neuville has held the lead since Sébastien Ogier dropped time thanks to a puncture on SS2, and despite growing that lead in the previous stage, Evans reeled in a small chunk of time.
But the Toyota driver was keen to express that he wasn’t focusing on the drivers around him as he goes to service.
“It’s getting dirtier with every car now. In places the car feels quite good but in others I am struggling a bit with the rear,” he said.
“I’m not looking at anywhere [in the battle], I’m just focusing on myself.”
Neuville has been complaining of not feeling 100% with his Hyundai through the morning, and despite leading at the end of the morning, his opinion remained the same.
“It’s hard. We are trying different set-ups all the time but I just don’t get the right thing,” he said.
“It’s very similar to Monte-Carlo where the chassis is moving a lot, and it makes the car very nervous. When it’s a bit faster I am struggling to control the car.”
Meanwhile Ott Tänak ended the morning in third, he’s only 6.1s off Evans and could mount a fight for second later on.
Esapekka Lappi and Takamoto Katsuta have both had quiet mornings and slowly got to grips with the Croatian roads, the pair sitting fourth and fifth.
Ogier would have been keen for a more straightforward ending to his morning following his previous puncture, but lost part of his rear spoiler shortly after the third split when he was put off-line and very nearly oversteered off the road.
He’ll be relieved that it was only a small chunk of his spoiler’s end plate which will be fixed as he heads to the service park, but once more he was surprised at the low grip conditions.
“[It was] more slippery than I thought, especially the end section,” he explained.
“We went a little wide into some branches and that’s probably the damage you can see.
“When you lose a minute and a half, the rally is different. It’s a shame but what can we do?”
That didn’t stop him from topping the stage however, and he heads into the afternoon loop in seventh, 1m27.1s off the lead and is now 31.3s off Pierre-Louis Loubet after cutting 5.5s out of the M-Sport driver’s advantage.
Kalle Rovanperä’s weekend quickly turned into a lonely one after the puncture he too suffered on the second stage, and is last of the Rally1 drivers, some 2m35.9s off Neuville.
