Adrien Fourmaux aced Rally Finland’s opening stage to establish an early Hyundai 1-2 ahead of team-mate Thierry Neuville.
As always, the Harju stage – held on the streets of host city Jyväskylä – played host to the first stage of Rally Finland, offering crews a different challenge to the flat-out forest action that’s to come.
That means Fourmaux’s stage win (by 1.1 seconds) isn’t necessarily an indication of how Rally Finland will play out for 2026, but the Frenchman had the rest of the weekend in mind as he threaded his i20 N Rally1 through the streets on Thursday.
“I really tried to optimize everything because I remember last year the gaps are so tight in the long stages, so we lose more on the short stages,” Fourmaux explained. “So I tried.”
While Fourmaux gapped his rivals by a second, the rest were close. Neuville beat Elfyn Evans and Sébastien Ogier (who shared the third fastest time) by 0.1s, with Takamoto Katsuta another 0.6s adrift and just 0.1s ahead of Rally Estonia winner Sami Pajari.
Toyota locked out third to seventh places with Oliver Solberg at the rear of the quintet, 2.9s down on Fourmaux’s rally lead but 0.1s ahead of Hyundai’s Esapekka Lappi.
Jon Armstrong was the fastest M-Sport Ford, 0.3s adrift of Lappi, with team-mate Josh McErlean sharing the same time as WRC2 leader Robert Virves.
A scrappy run from Mārtiņš Sesks leaves him 6.2s off the lead, 2.1s behind McErlean.
