Thierry Neuville has taken the lead back from Ott Tänak after a storming run on SS11 as the Ypres Rally crossed past its halfway point.
Neuville had led his Hyundai team-mate by 2.5 seconds at the start of Saturday, but a strong run from the 2019 world champion allowed him to edge ahead of Neuville by just a single tenth of a second.
But Tänak was living on the edge on SS11, running wide early on the stage and dropping the rear wheels into a ditch but quickly escaping and fighting his way back onto the stage.
He had alarmingly reported a transmission issue at the end of the red-flagged SS10 but didn’t reveal at the end of the stage if that was still affecting him or not.
Either way, the timesheet told its own story. Tänak may have struggled somewhat but Neuville was awesome – going 3.2s quicker than anyone else and crucially a massive 6.2s quicker than Tänak to establish a 6.1s lead.
“Yeah it’s OK but in the fast, it’s a bit nervous and I’m always hesitating and I know I can go faster. But somehow the time is not bad so I must be satisfied,” he said.
Elfyn Evans meanwhile is clinging onto the two Hyundais as best he can, fighting against a 10s time penalty that was earned when he and Scott Martin checked into SS8 on Friday one minute late.
Without that, Evans would be just 5.1s off the lead – but he didn’t enjoy SS11.
“I’m not happy,” he said, “the rhythm is not there and it’s tricky to be honest.”
Esapekka Lappi no longer has anyone to fight after Craig Breen’s crash on SS10, but the Toyota driver came alive on SS11 with by far his most competitive run of the weekend so far – third fastest, four tenths up on outgoing leader Tänak.
“I felt just relaxed,” Lappi said. “I’m surprised, to be fair I brake many times too early but OK, I’ll take it as it is!”
Adrien Fourmaux nicked ahead of Oliver Solberg into fifth place on Wijtschate – the stage where he spectacularly crashed out 12 months ago.
That, and the feeling of remorse for his team-mate Breen who crashed on the previous test, were what occupied Fourmaux’s thoughts at stage-end rather than the stage time.
“We were really lucky, I’m really sorry for Craig definitely,” reflected Fourmaux.
“For us in this stage, we just wanted to have a clean run. Last year we finished our rally 500m from here so I wasn’t taking any risks on this one.”
Solberg lost just 0.4s to Fourmaux, but that was enough for him to slide behind the M-Sport driver overall by only 0.1s as he continued to struggle with “crazy understeer”.
“It was an awful stage to be honest I am surprised by the time,” Solberg said. “I guess I’m lucky to have the time I have, a lot of understeer.”
Gus Greensmith has slipped outside the top 10 as a result of his trip into a field and resultant damage on the previous stage; he started SS11 19 minutes after he was supposed to and earned a 3m10s time penalty.
“We crashed on the stage before and broke the rear-left, tried to fix it but I think it needs a bit more fixing before making it to service,” Greensmith said, dropping another three minutes on the stopwatch through the stage.
Takamoto Katsuta was one of the few Rally1 drivers to complete the previous test at full rally speed and was frustrated to have lost the assistance of his hybrid unit.
But the 100kW unit was back in full operation for SS11, allowing Katsuta to be much closer to the pace of his team-mate Kalle Rovanperä.
Prior to SS11 Rovanperä had yet to be beaten on any stage that he’s completed so far this weekend, but that run came to an end as the championship leader could only set the fifth fastest time.
Rovanperä’s weekend is now a consolation exercise as he bids to extract as many powerstage points from the weekend as possible on Sunday.
