Sébastien Ogier won the opening stage of Central European Rally, as Adrien Fourmaux and Kalle Rovanperä shared second.
Golf und Therme will be run twice on Thursday afternoon, and it was championship leader Ogier who drove through it the fastest on the first pass – 1.7 seconds up on anybody else.
“OK,” said Ogier, “clean stage. Just the beginning…”
Fourmaux was by far the strongest of the Hyundais, admitting the road was dirtier than expected – a comment echoed by all those later in the running order.
Rovanperä meanwhile felt his tire package of three softs and two hards didn’t quite work.
“It was not so good in the beginning car-wise, a lot of understeer,” he said. “I was definitely expecting more grip – other than that it was OK, but for sure lost a lot of time in the beginning.”
The rest of the early top-six is filled with Toyotas; Sami Pajari is fourth, 2.1s off the lead and 0.9s clear of Elfyn Evans who hit a hay bale, with Takamoto Katsuta another 0.2s behind.
Evans rued: “A few little errors, it wasn’t the tidiest run. Trying hard but not ideal. Sure [we need to try] but you’ve got to be smooth and make it work with it.”
Reigning world champion Thierry Neuville is an early seventh, 4.2s off the lead with team-mate Ott Tänak a full second behind.
Neuville was “happy with my run” while Tänak added: “I feel OK. I mean, yeah. I tried. It matches with the feeling.
Grégoire Munster leads M-Sport’s charge in ninth, 7.3s off the lead but 4.6s clear of team-mate Josh McErlean.
McErlean smiled: “I don’t know if people realize how difficult it is to race these boys.”
