Thierry Neuville responded to Craig Breen’s Ypres Rally advances by outpacing his World Rally Championship victory rival on SS11 Watou, while Elfyn Evans claimed Toyota’s first stage win of the weekend.
Over the 8.46-mile test, Neuville was 0.8 seconds faster than Breen to bring his rally lead back up to 4.3s, with Evans fastest by 0.3s.
Neuville (pictured below) said he was continuing his rhythm, and “so far the feeling is OK”, while Breen said it was a tricky stage when running sixth on the road, one position ahead of Neuville.
Photo: Hyundai Motorsport
“[There was] lots of gravel in places, I think it was getting a bit worse with every car, but [I’m] still here, still in the fight,” said Breen.
The battle for third between Toyota team-mates Evans and Kalle Rovanperä continued to ebb and flow, and Evans was quicker by 2.7 seconds to extend his advantage to 4s.
“The feeling’s OK in here,” Evans said at stage end. “It was a bit more bumpy than expected. I’m getting caught out by the car bottoming quite a lot, bit of a surprise there. But doesn’t really slow us down.”
Rovanperä once again pointed out how difficult the stages were, on what is his first full rally on Pirelli’s asphalt tires.
“I tried to push, but then there is many tricky places so I tried to be wise also not to take any huge risk,” he said.
Sitting 11.4s away from the podium in fifth place is Sébastien Ogier in the third Toyota. He has been left to rue running second on the road following the retirement of the cars of Pierre-Louis Loubet and Takamoto Katsuta that would otherwise have gone onto stages ahead of him.
“It’s been a difficult start in this one for me, because cold tires we waited 25 minutes at the start and it’s very fast, so I had a little moment on the fast [bit],” he said, explaining that he had reached SS11 long before the cars behind him as he drove the previous stage during a red-flag period while his rivals ran through at full speed once it was restarted later on.
“There’s now only one car in front, so not so great position,” he concluded.
Ott Tänak came through the stage sixth fastest and is sixth overall, while M-Sport Ford’s Gus Greensmith dropped over 20s to every other World Rally Car driver.
Once again there was drama in WRC2, as Oliver Solberg’s power-steering issues continued in the Hyundai i20 N Rally2, which is contesting its first rally. During SS11 he had co-driver Aaron Johnston operating the handbrake, and he finished the stage over half a minute slower than WRC2 stage winner Nikolay Gryazin in his Volkswagen Polo GTI.
Sebastien Bedoret, scoring points towards the Belgian Rally Championship on this event, was the fastest Rally2 driver and just 2.9s slower than Greensmith, who had intercom issues meaning he couldn’t hear co-driver Chris Patterson.
Photo: Jaanus Ree/Red Bull Content Pool
Bedoret was also 8.2s faster than Yohan Rossel (pictured above), meaning he moves past the Citroën driver for the WRC3 lead by 0.3s and into seventh place overall.
SS11 times
1 Elfyn Evans/Scott Martin (Toyota) 6m42s
2 Thierry Neuville/Martijn Wydaeghe (Hyundai) +0.3s
3 Craig Breen/Paul Nagle (Hyundai) +1.1s
4 Sébastien Ogier/Julien Ingrassia (Toyota) +2s
5 Kalle Rovanperä/Jonne Halttunen (Toyota) +2.7s
6 Ott Tänak/Martin Järveoja (Hyundai) +3.7s
Leading positions after SS11
1 Neuville/Wydaeghe 1h31m08s
2 Breen/Nagle +4.3s
3 Evans/Martin +35s
4 Rovanperä/Halttunen +39s
5 Ogier/Ingrassia +46.4s
6 Tänak/Järveoja +3m40s
7 Sebastien Bedoret/Francois Gilbert (Škoda) +7m42s
8 Yohan Rossel/Alexandre Coria (Citroën) +7m42.3s
9 Pieter Jan Michiel Cracco/Jaspen Vermeulen (Škoda) +7m58.3s
10 Fabien Kreim/Frank Christian (Volkswagen) +8m37.5s
