Pierre-Louis Loubet has doubled up, winning his second World Rally Championship stage immediately after his first, as Esapekka Lappi deposed Sébastien Loeb of second place.
Just 4.9 seconds split the top four as they headed into the tire fitting zone after SS5, and the change of rubber for the final two stages of Friday gave them all a fresh onus to push.
It was Loeb who bossed the morning, winning all three of the first three stages to establish the rally lead. But an overshoot at a hairpin on the stage preceding the TFZ opened the door for Loubet to sneak ahead and grab the lead of the event.
Loeb’s pace wasn’t as impressive on the Livadia stage though as he ceded 2.8s – and position – to Toyota’s Lappi.
“I think Lappi is very fast now because I think I did quite a good stage,” Loeb said. “So no real reason [for the time loss].”
Lappi though said he wasn’t on a push, instead describing his run as “efficient”. But his performance was enough to promote him to second, half a second up on the nine-time world champion.
However, nobody could match Loubet. He may well be running 11th on the road and therefore has better road conditions than his rivals, but once again he absolutely made the most of it – winning SS6 by 3.6s.
It means Loubet leads the rally by 7.8s over Lappi, with his M-Sport team-mate Loeb 8.3s adrift.
His explanation for his stunning pace was put down to everything except himself: “The car, the co-driver, all around, thank you,” Loubet said.
Thierry Neuville remains in the hunt but is at a disadvantage to the rest, running significantly further up the running order (fourth) compared to next-highest Lappi who is the seventh car onto Friday’s stages.
But Neuville, who’s 7.9s behind Loeb, wasn’t happy with his stage either.
“It wasn’t great driving to be honest, I struggled with the balance and I had quite some understeer and suddenly oversteer,” he said.
Neuville may be slipped back a touch but the front four have broken clear of the rest of the pack, with fifth-placed Dani Sordo now 10.1s adrift of Neuville.
Sordo moved past both Elfyn Evans and Ott Tänak on the stage, as Tänak went the other way and lost two places.
Evans remains sixth despite being usurped Sordo, benefiting from running one place behind Tänak on the road to head him on the leaderboard, albeit by only by half a second.
Those further back in the running order continued to boss proceedings on what were first pass conditions, as Kalle Rovanperä and Tänak were the two slowest factory Rally1 drivers and Gus Greensmith, 10th on the road, was a strong fifth fastest.
He’s now just 1.9s behind Tänak’s Hyundai in eighth overall, 17.5s up on Rovanperä.
“I knew with the road sweeping today if it was a clean drive the time would be good, so that’s what I focused on,” Greensmith admitted.
