Elfyn Evans leads the World Rally Championship for the first time in his career after sealing a controlled victory on Rally Sweden ahead of Ott Tänak and Kalle Rovanperä.
Evans’ victory was the second of his career, his first for Toyota, the first for a British driver in Sweden and the first in the WRC for co-driver Scott Martin.
Winning five of the rally’s nine stages, Evans defeated world champion Tänak by 12.7 seconds with teenage team-mate Rovanperä stealing third from Sébastien Ogier on the final stage.
Warmer weather and a consequent lack of snow and sometimes ice forced a heavily revised itinerary; so there was therefore just one stage on Sunday, the Likenäs powerstage, to round out the rally.
Evans took it steady on the final test, dropping 9.1s to stage winner Rovanperä, but there was no need for him to push. He now shares the lead of the World Rally Championship with Thierry Neuville with both drivers on 42 points, but leads outright courtesy of two podium places. Ogier is just five points adrift in third.
“Yeah a great weekend for us,” Evans said. “I have to say a big thank you to everyone [in the team], obviously it’s been a big effort trying to settle into a new team but these guys have made it very easy and given us everything we needed.”
Following his monster shunt in Monte Carlo, Tänak found himself on the back foot as he continued to learn the Hyundai i20 WRC.
He spent the majority of Rally Sweden chasing what he called a “go-kart feeling”, which perhaps pegged him back from an ultimate attack on Evans. But catching Evans would’ve been tricky no matter how prepared Tänak was, such was the Welshman’s irresistible form.
“We are here so it’s good,” Tänak declared. “I can’t really complain. For sure the car has the speed so I just need to learn it more.”
Rovanperä and team-mate Ogier were locked in an epic battle throughout Saturday after Rovanperä slipped back into Ogier’s clutches with a poor run on Friday’s Torsby Spint stage. Ogier headed his 19-year-old team-mate by just 0.5s going into the powerstage.
“I gave all what I had,” Rovanperä said. “I think the front tires are quite dead but I was still pushing on the ice.”
Rovanperä’s charge was rewarded as he won the powerstage and pulled 3.9s from Ogier to take third place by 3.4s over the six-time world champion, who bizarrely found himself as the lowest-placed of the Toyotas.
“It’s been a difficult weekend but we are at the end. Once again I was not pushing enough on these tricky conditions but at least we’ll have a good position for Mexico,” Ogier said. He will start Mexico third on the road behind Evans and Neuville.
Neuville opened the road on Friday courtesy of his Rally Monte Carlo victory and would languish at the bottom of the top six as a result. Relieved of road sweeping duties on Saturday, Neuville set his sights on M-Sport’s lead runner Esapekka Lappi and made strong inroads throughout the morning.
But Lappi hit back towards the end of Saturday to hold a 4.5s advantage over Hyundai heading into the Likenäs powerstage. Neuville admiited: “We had to push also for the position and the powerstage points but I began to lose the front so had to back off a bit.”
Neuville did indeed beat Lappi on the powerstage, but only by 3.1s, meaning Lappi secured fifth place by 1.4s.
“I’m not controlling the car to be honest it’s just sailing across the mud,” Lappi said. “That took out some confidence so I didn’t push so much in the end. Good to go to Mexico from here.”
Craig Breen was brought into the Hyundai fold to replace Sébastien Loeb but struggled to find his feet initially. Tucked in behind team-mate Neuville, he couldn’t really fight forward even if he wanted to and a seventh place was a solid if not eye-catching result.
“Personally no [I’m not pleased], I always want to do a bit better,” Breen summarized. “It’s hard not to be in the position I want to be, fighting for podiums, fighting for wins. It’s a pity the conditions were against us and a pity they were such short loops but don’t get me wrong it’s still a pleasure to be in a World Rally car.”
Teemu Suninen suffered a high-speed moment on the pre-event shakedown stage on Thursday, and then had a lackluster performance on the rally proper. On an event he led 12 months ago, Suninen was nowhere this year and found himself fighting Takamoto Katsuta in eighth and ninth places. Both drivers had fairly anonymous rallies and brought their cars home unscathed, 35.1s apart.
“It’s a big shame that we couldn’t get many points from here and especially the driving in that last stage was quite bad, I stalled already on the first corner,” said a subdued Suninen. “Not very good so need to analyze well and be stronger on the next rally.”
Jari-Matti Latvala appeared in a privately-run Toyota Yaris WRC for the first event in a bit-part programme this year. But the four-time Rally Sweden winner would have a rally to forget in 2020 with first a spin and then an intermittent electrical problem on Friday ruining his charge. Latvala wanted results rather than stage times, so opted to take no further part on Saturday and Sunday.
Mads Ostberg won WRC2 for the second time this season in his Citroen C3 R5 ahead of Hyundai’s Ole Christian Veiby but once again fell short of finishing as the highest-placed R5 car. The squabble for WRC3 supremacy between Emil Lindholm and Jari Huttunen superseded the WRC2 pace and trickled into the top 10.
Lindholm headed the class for much of the event in his Skoda Fabia R5 but was overhauled by Huttunen’s Hyundai on Saturday’s final forest stage. Huttunen doubled his advantage on the short Torsby Sprint test and was again quicker on Sunday’s finale to beat his rival by five seconds and seal 10th overall. Ostberg was a further two seconds behind Lindholm in 12th place.
Local star Tom Kristensson won the opening round of the JWRC in his Ford Fiesta R2T, edging old Opel team-mate Martin Sesks to get his season off to the perfect start.
Result
1 Evans (Toyota)
2 Tänak (Hyundai) +12.7s
3 Rovanperä (Toyota) +20.2s
4 Ogier (Toyota) +23.6s
5 Lappi (M-Sport Ford) +32.4s
6 Neuville (Hyundai) +33.8s
7 Breen (Hyundai) +1m00.9s
8 Suninen (M-Sport Ford) +1m24.5s
9 Katsuta (Toyota) +1m59.6s
10 Huttunen (Hyundai) +4m03.0s
