Sébastien Ogier leads the Monte Carlo Rally on Thursday night ahead of Toyota team-mate Elfyn Evans as Thierry Neuville dropped to third, surviving a hairy spin on ice.
The opening stage of the new World Rally Championship season, which ended at the famous Col de Turini was a fairly calm affair but SS2, La Cabanette / Col de Castillon, was longer and more demanding with significant sections of ice.
That ice caused particularly problems for Hyundai’s Neuville in particular, who had been third heading onto the test.
Neuville set the timing screen alight through the opening splits but approaching a left-hand hairpin, the 2020 Monte Carlo winner lost control and spun his i20 N Rally1 off the road.
TV cameras cut just after Neuville dropped it off the road, adding tension to the situation, but he recovered impeccably to set the fourth fastest time.
Ogier meanwhile remained imperious and maintained his 100% start to 2023 with a clean sweep of stage wins on the first evening.
He was a massive 4.7 seconds quicker than Evans on SS2 to extend his overnight lead to six seconds, but already the two GR Yaris Rally1s are running away at the head of the pack with Evans already 9.4s up the road from Ott Tänak.
Tänak’s first competitive run in a Puma Rally1 wasn’t overly successful as he mentioned an electrical issue had hampered him on the way to the stage and then that he didn’t have fifth gear, but his pace was strong on SS2 and he ends the evening third – 0.1s up on former team-mate Neuville.
Despite being overhauled by Tänak who climbed two places on stage two, Kalle Rovanperä remains fifth overall – 17.1s off the lead – as the non-manufacturer-registered Toyota of Takamoto Katsuta struggled in the tricky conditions.
Katsuta dropped over half a minute to slip from fourth to ninth, already 57s down on the leader.
Dani Sordo went the other way, climbing from ninth to sixth in his Hyundai after setting the sixth fastest time. He has 8.2s in hand over M-Sport’s Pierre-Louis Loubet with Hyundai debutant Esapekka Lappi just 1.1s in arrears of Loubet.
Nikolay Gryazin is just 9.6s behind Katsuta after an impressive opening evening to lead WRC2 by 16.7s over Stéphane Lefebvre – ensuring the new Škoda Fabia RS Rally2 remains so far unbeaten in the WRC after its first pair of stages.
Yohan Rossel holds third in a Citroën C3 Rally2 but Oliver Solberg is over two minutes off the pace after collecting a puncture on SS2.
