Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville set the pace at Rally Portugal’s shakedown on Wednesday, with team-mate Adrien Fourmaux also inside the top-three.
The 3.5-mile Baltar test offered World Rally Championship crews their first taste of European gravel in 2026 following three Tarmac events, the snow in Sweden and Safari Rally Kenya.
Toyota has dominated the campaign so far, claiming all five victories with Hyundai earning just two podium finishes (second for Adrien Fourmaux in Kenya and third for Hayden Paddon in Croatia).
But Hyundai has had far more confidence in its gravel pace than Tarmac, and the i20s were fighting at the front of Rally Portugal’s shakedown stage at least.
Fourmaux set the benchmark by four tenths of a second on the first pass, before 2024 world champion Neuville rose to the top of the times with a 3m51.2s on his third attempt.
That put him 0.3s ahead of Sami Pajari’s Toyota with team-mate Fourmaux another two tenths adrift.
The returning Mãrtiņš Sesks was comfortably the quickest of the M-Sport Ford Pumas as he set the fourth best time, 0.6s off the benchmark and 1.1s clear of ninth-fastest Jon Armstrong. Josh McErlean was just two tenths shy of his fellow Irishman.
Four cars were sandwiched in between them, led by world championship leader Elfyn Evans who set the same time and Sesks to outpace Toyota team-mate Oliver Solberg by a single tenth. Both Evans and Solberg were within a second of Neuville’s effort, finishing in fifth and sixth.
Takamoto Katsuta was the first driver outside a second of the ultimate pace, as his best run was 1.2s shy of Neuville’s but 0.2s faster than Hyundai’s thrid driver Dani Sordo.
Reigning world champion Sébastien Ogier was surprisingly the slowest of the Rally1 runners, but he only recorded one representative time with his second pass reserved for a VIP passenger ride.
Ogier was fifth fastest on the first run, 0.8s off then pacesetter Fourmaux, but ended the session 3.2s down on Neuville.
Teemu Suninen was the fastest of the WRC2 runners in his Toyota ahead of fellow GR Yaris Rally2 driver Gus Greensmith and Škoda’s Andreas Mikkelsen.
Rally Portugal begins with three stages on Thursday before a further 20 across Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
