Thierry Neuville set the pace at the Central European Rally shakedown, despite hitting an Armco barrier with force on his first pass.
After seven successive events on gravel, this week’s CER – comprising stages in Germany, Austria and Czechia – marks a return to Tarmac for the first time since April’s Rally Islas Canarias, which Kalle Rovanperä won.
The shakedown stage – which curiously didn’t have a name – will be used as part of the Golf und Therme test which runs twice later on Thursday, so was the perfect opportunity to get dialed into this weekend’s challenge.
Running first on the road for the first time all season, Sébastien Ogier could face the best of the road conditions on the first day, and duly set the quickest time over the 2.8-mile stage on both the first and second runs.
However Neuville nipped ahead after he went for a third attempt; outpacing Ogier by 1.1s to atone for an earlier error.
“I just braked too late on the first junction, locked the wheels, tried to make the corner but the speed was a bit too fast,” said the world champion. “Not the greatest start, but the car is fine.”
Neuville still has a mathematical shot at the drivers’ championship, but realistically the contest is now a four-horse race. Ogier leads Elfyn Evans by two points, with Rovanperä and Tänak 21 and 43 points adrift respectively.
“I’m excited,” said Ogier. “It’s been [a] great [season] so far, but the hardest part is still to be done, so for sure we need to focus on that and forget what happened to this point.”
Ogier was just 0.1s quicker than Evans on shakedown, with Tänak another 0.1s adrift in his Hyundai. Curiously, Tänak is running the previous-spec i20 N Rally1 while his team-mates drive the latest version.
Grégoire Munster posted the fifth fastest shakedown time for M-Sport, overcoming a broken driveshaft on the first pass which he had picked up on the road section.
He was 0.1s faster than old team-mate Adrien Fourmaux, who described this weekend’s Czech stages as “proper Barum style”, with Munster’s current team-mate Josh McErlean just 0.3s in arrears.
Takamoto Katsuta, Rovanperä (who did just one competitive run) and Sami Pajari completed the top 10.
“I feel like we are ready to fight for sure,” said Rovanperä. “It’s nice to be back on Tarmac. We have three different types of stages in one weekend so it’s a special one.”
