The ding-dong battle between Thierry Neuville and Elfyn Evans for Rally Croatia victory took yet another turn on stage 14, as Neuville snatched the lead back one stage after losing it.
Neuville’s tire choice seemed compromised as light rain began to fall on Saturday afternoon, as his selection of hards on the front and softs on the rear of his Hyundai i20 N Rally1 left him struggling on a somewhat damp stage 13.
But drier-than-expected conditions on stage 14 allowed Neuville to strike back, pushing hard and carving 4.3s out of the lead Toyota to restore his lead with an advantage of 2.3s.
“I was flat out,” declared Neuville. “When I knew there was 50% chance it would be raining at the end, we just went for it. It was a controlled drive but I was really pushing to keep the temperature in the hard tire.
Evans had, on paper, the better tire choice, with four softs fitted to his Yaris. But it made little difference: “I didn’t have the best feeling in all fairness,” he said at stage end.
Sébastien Ogier was also 3.9s slower than Neuville, meaning he has now fallen 9.5s adrift of the rally leader.
Ogier has been enticingly close to the lead for all of Saturday but not quite able to close in further on the top spot
Ott Tänak, Adrien Fourmaux, Takamoto Katusta, Andreas Mikkelsen and Grégoire Munster all remain in their long-held positions of fourth through to eighth, though in Mikkelsen’s case he nearly didn’t make the finish at all.
Hyundai’s third driver in Croatia understeered off into a grassy area next to a cliff face during the final sequence of corners, where rain had begun to fall. He was able to continue unaffected to the finish.
“I just understeered out in a corner,” Mikkelsen explained. “I arrived a bit too quickly into that one and there was a bit of gravel [on the inside].”
Yohan Rossel remains on a charge in WRC2, taking another 14.4s out of Citroën team-mate Nikolay Gryazin’s lead.
Gryazin’s decision to take a split of hards and softs has left him struggling in the damper sections of stages and has now lost 35.3s of his lead in the last two stages alone. His advantage over Rossel has now been cut to 24.7s.
Pepe López is in a similar situation to Gryazin, stuck with hard tires on the front of his car and with soft-shod Nicolas Ciamin bearing down behind him.
While the duo is contesting fifth place on the timesheets, they’re effectively battling for third-place points, as Sami Pajari and Gus Greensmith ahead are not registered to score this weekend.
Ciamin cut López’s advantage in half on SS14 and the pair are now separated by 12.2s.
