Thierry Neuville has stormed into the lead of the Monte Carlo Rally, heading a three-way battle with the Toyotas of Elfyn Evans and Sébastien Ogier.
Hyundai’s leading man laid down an impressive marker first thing on Saturday morning, winning the Esparron-Oze test by 9.6s. Not even he understood how he’d done it: “I don’t know,” he said on learning how much faster than Ogier, 18.8s off his pace, he’d been. “Probably I was quite awake this morning.”
Evans meanwhile was in trouble: a hybrid issue left him down on power on SS10 and he began to lose time, surrendering the lead. Across the Friday morning loop, he dropped 21.2s to the new rally leader.
Ogier was slow to start but did wake up on the next test, winning by 2.1s from Neuville. Then on the loop-closing run, he had a near-brush with a wall, overshooting a dusty left-hander and narrowly escaping an impact on the right rear of his GR Yaris.
Ogier was a bit too careful on the Saturday opener and lost time
Those 18.8 seconds Ogier had lost to Neuville on the Saturday opener continued to weigh on his mind by the end of the loop: “It would be better if we didn’t give so much time away this morning but that’s how it is.”
Both Ott Tänak and Adrien Fourmaux are now running their own rallies, in effect, as the two drifted apart on the timesheets and settled into fourth and fifth place respectively.
Tänak indicated he was still struggling with some minor engine mapping issues; though he tied Neuville’s stage time on SS11 he was otherwise off the pace of the leaders, falling 1m10.9s behind the podium places.
“Some hairpins where we don’t have the boost but other than that it’s OK,” said Tänak.
Fourmaux has been told to hold station by his team
Meanwhile, Fourmaux’s day is being dictated by team instructions: get to the end of the day in fifth place.
“I need to follow the team orders to be fair,” said Fourmaux. “I just want to get through the stages and enjoy. I have no push, definitely.
“We are happy with where we are, we don’t want to catch Ott. We just want to avoid punctures and make no mistakes.”
Grégoire Munster in the second M-Sport and Andreas Mikkelsen are locked in a battle for sixth place, with an error for the Hyundai returnee instigating the fight.
Mikkelsen's Rally1 debut has been a mixed bag so far
On the first corner of Saturday morning’s first stage, Mikkelsen’s i20 slid on a patch of ice and overshot a corner, necessitating a multi-point turn to get going again.
Meanwhile, Munster had put in the best stage performance of his short Rally1 career on the same bit of asphalt, going third-fastest to carve half a minute out of his former WRC2 rival and take sixth overall.
From there the pair were evenly matched, ending the loop 4.3s apart. Both drivers face a similar problem adapting to Rally1 cars: the big step up in aerodynamics from WRC2.
“Every time I was coming to the corner thinking I’m too fast and I’m five kilometers per hour too slow!” Munster explained.
Katsuta is pressing on to make amends for his Friday mistake
After his day one off Takamoto Katsuta is slowly climbing the leaderboard; he’s now up to 12th place. He needs to find around a minute to reach the points-scoring positions by the end of the day, when the first batch of points are locked in for the rally.
Nikolay Gryazin and Pepe López remain locked in a tight battle for WRC2 victory, separated by 1.1s. Yohan Rossel remains in third.
Oliver Solberg retired on the road section before stage 11; he’d suffered a left-rear puncture and right-rear slow puncture simultaneously and with only one spare in the back, he was forced to park up.
