Last year’s Rally Portugal winner Elfyn Evans topped the shakedown stage for this year’s event, as the returning Sébastien Ogier and Loeb could only manage seventh and 10th respectively.
Portugal is the first opportunity World Rally Championship teams have to try their new hybrid Rally1 machines on gravel, and on the evidence of the 2.83-mile shakedown test, the pace looks close between all three.
Evans set the benchmark time, a 2m56.1s, for Toyota but M-Sport’s Craig Breen and Hyundai’s Ott Tänak rounded out the top three and were split by just 0.7 seconds.
It’s an important weekend for Evans who is still only ninth in the championship after a disappointing start to the season, but that should give him a good advantage on Friday in terms of road position.
“Yeah of course it’s always a help so we need to try and make the most of that,” he said.
“Obviously it’s quite slippery now on the first run still, but we’ll see what it’s like in the rally.”
Breen, who hasn’t competed on Rally Portugal for four years, stopped the clock 0.4s after Evans in his Puma Rally1, edging Tänak’s i20 N Rally1 by 0.3s
“It’s a long weekend, the first time on gravel so it’s really difficult to expect anything,” commented the 2019 world champion.
“We just need to go and see how it’s going to go.”
Tänak’s team-mate Thierry Neuville was fourth fastest on the Paredes shakedown, another tenth adrift, but will face a tough challenge to match that pace once the rally gets going as the second car onto the stages.
“It’s hard to say,” Neuville said when asked what he expected from himself this weekend.
“First thing is getting a feeling of the car on gravel now after some testing, it’s going to be a challenging weekend for us. There’s quite a lot of cleaning on the first day but we’re going to try and be on it all the time and see what’s possible.”
On just his second of seven outings this season for M-Sport Ford, Pierre-Louis Loubet impressed with the fifth quickest time having momentarily topped the times before being usurped by the top four.
His best effort was 0.3s down on Neuville but 0.1s quicker than the third Hyundai of Dani Sordo who was quickest of all after the first runs, despite never driving the i20 N Rally1 competitively before.
Reigning world champion Ogier’s best effort was 0.1s poorer than Sordo’s and 1.3s down on his Toyota team-mate Evans, but on the first pass at least he was without the vital information from co-driver Benjamin Veillas.
“I have no sound at all,” he said.
“It feels OK, the first run was a little bit disturbing to start without notes but we have to start to get the feeling again.
“It’s a little bit slippery in the morning with hard tires but let’s try to build slowly up.”
World championship leader Kalle Rovanperä was an uncustomary eighth and faces the unenviable task of sweeping the loose gravel clear from the roads on Friday. His time, a 2m57.6s, was 0.2s down on Ogier’s.
Gus Greensmith, sporting a distinctive new yellow crash helmet in support of UK charity Dogs Trust, holds big hopes for a podium finish this weekend but the M-Sport driver had a complicated shakedown after losing the 100kW hybrid unit on the first pass.
He was therefore the only driver to tackle the stage more than the mandatory three times, and his best effort was only good enough for ninth – some two seconds slower than pace setter Evans.
Monte Carlo Rally winner Loeb set the world alight four months ago but had a rather more sedate start to his second WRC outing of the season, rounding out the top 10 times on shakedown.
Since contesting the Monte, Loeb has competed in Extreme E, rally raid and even DTM so he took some time to adapt to rallying once more.
“I was trying to find a rhythm again,” he confessed.
“We did a good recce, not a lot of testing, so we continue to work a bit in the morning.”
Toyota Next Generation driver Takamoto Katsuta set a promising seventh best time after the first pass but faded to 11th, albeit comfortably clear of Adrien Fourmaux.
After two big crashes and a mechanical retirement from the first three rounds of the season, Fourmaux is under massive pressure to finish Rally Portugal and already seemed rather subdued on shakedown.
Asked how he was feeling after his run of form, Fourmaux effectively dodged the question and said: “It’s nice to be back on gravel with the new generation, so it will be really exciting for everybody to see where everybody is so I’m sure everybody will enjoy and it’s nice to see the spectators also.”
His best time, a 3m01.9s, was a massive 6.8s off the pace but that’s ultimately what he needs to do this weekend.
Teemu Suninen was fastest in a stacked WRC2 field, 0.5s up on Hyundai team-mate Oliver Solberg. Marco Bulacia was a further second back in third while Andreas Mikkelsen was fourth fastest, attempting the shakedown stage just once.
Shakedown times
1 Evans/Martin (Toyota) 2m56.1s
2 Breen/Nagle (M-Sport Ford) +0.4s
3 Tänak/Järveoja (Hyundai) +0.7s
4 Neuville/Wydaeghe (Hyundai) +0.8s
5 Loubet/Landais (M-Sport Ford) +1.1s
6 Sordo/Carrera (Hyundai) +1.2s
7 Ogier/Veillas (Toyota) +1.3s
8 Rovanperä/Halttunen (Toyota) +1.5s
9 Greensmith/Andersson (M-Sport Ford) +2.0s
10 Loeb/Galmiche (M-Sport Ford)+2.4s
