Toyota’s pair of world champions Sébastien Ogier and Kalle Rovanperä are in the thick of a fight for the lead of Rally Spain, separated by only 4.8 seconds.
Rovanperä had started strongest with two stages wins but, after a brief skirmish with Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville, Ogier emerged as the leader, aided by a big stage win on the first pass of Les Garrigues Altes.
Ogier was 6.5s up on Rovanperä after stage five, before Neuville had begun to fall away, though two stage wins on Friday afternoon allowed the 22-year-old Rovanperä to close up on the eight-time world champion.
A push on the final stage of the day from Ogier gave him another 1.2s to add to his lead, though the eldest member of the Toyota line-up knew it was far from enough to keep the youngest at bay.
“I was a bit fearing being seventh on the road today with the amount of cuts,” said Ogier, having been concerned that the amount of mud dragged onto the stages from corner cutting would slow him as it had on the first two tests of the day.
“But the feeling in the car was really good so I could enjoy the whole day. Not so easy with the changing weather all the time but so far so good. Obviously 4.8s is not comfortable so we’ll have to keep pushing.”
Toyota’s leading duo have now pulled away from Hyundai’s top pairing of Neuville and Ott Tänak, who had been in the mix early on but faded away on Friday afternoon.
Neuville ended Friday 12.5s off the lead, but had led the rally after stage three. Thereafter he didn’t feel completely at ease behind the wheel, concerned about the rear end of his i20 N Rally1 being a little too loose.
“We do not have the speed,” Neuville confessed. “To be honest, I can’t really push to the maximum. I always have a bit of inertia, the car starts to slide, sometimes not. So it’s difficult.
“It’s hard to feel where to improve. I made some changes here but obviously on the crossed [tyre] choice on a dry road, wasn’t the greatest choice for this condition. We expected more rain.”
It was a similar story for fourth-placed Tänak, who said that “we were quite well scared for the wet weather” that failed to materialize on the last stage.
But worst still, his hybrid boost problems from Friday morning had returned again for the last stage of the day, setting him further back still. Tänak is now 7.5s off the final podium place, though has plenty of time in hand over Dani Sordo in fifth after his team-mate suffered a puncture on the day’s penultimate test.
It was one of three punctures in the midfield; in addition to Sordo, Toyota’s Elfyn Evans and Takamoto Katsuta had also sustained front-left punctures. Sordo had his problem last of that trio and lost the least time, though is still half a minute behind Tänak.
Evans, meanwhile, is 10.3s off Sordo and had little to say or be particularly positive about, other than trying to shrug off another difficult day during a WRC season that’s tested his patience repeatedly.
“The damage was done on the previous one,” said Evans, referencing the earlier puncture. “Not a great day but we keep at it tomorrow.”
M-Sport Ford’s Craig Breen is only 2.5s behind Evans in seventh but had a taxing day of his own, having been quite far off the pace early on with pacenotes written for conditions far worse than were experienced.
Though he found some more speed in the afternoon, he was fighting a battle with understeer that he was struggling to win.
“A day of ups and downs,” Breen concluded. “This morning was definitely a struggle; this afternoon was somewhat better.
“I have a lot of work I need to do with the car. I struggled with the front and unfortunately on a rally like this, if you struggle with the front, you just haemorrhage time hand over fist.
“The most important thing today was just to get through and make no errors or mistakes. It’s been so often this year so I’m just happy to get through with a clean nose.”
Katsuta had fallen to ninth after his puncture but a big push on the final stage of the day promoted him back to eighth, at the expense of M-Sport’s Adrien Fourmaux.
Fourmaux’s long-running battle with Greensmith over ninth swung further in his direction on the last test, as a mistake a few corners from the finish line of stage eight by the latter cost Greensmith a few seconds.
Both are now being caught by the fourth Puma Rally1 of Pierre-Louis Loubet, who put the hammer down and set the third-fastest time on the final stage of the day.
“We are happy because in this one was close to being on fire,” said Loubet, bringing back memories of an incident earlier in the day when a melted exhaust joint caused a minor fire at the finish line of the same stage earlier in the day.
