Ogier pounces on Evans mistake for overnight Monte lead

Fastest on Friday's final two stages, the nine-time winner holds a 12.6s advantage over his Toyota team-mate

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Sébastien Ogier took advantage of mistake from Elfyn Evans in icy conditions to lead the Monte Carlo Rally after Friday’s stages by 12.6 seconds.

Evans had himself had taken the lead from Thierry Neuville on the morning stages, with Neuville then losing two minutes when he overshot a hairpin and damaged his Hyundai’s rear suspension.

Evans extended his advanatge by setting the fastest time on the afternoon loop’s first stage, as Ogier – 6.4s slower – admitted, “Obviously I didn’t push enough.”

But on SS8 Saint-Léger-les-Mélèzes – La Bâtie-Neuve, which had been cancelled on the morning pass, a short section of ice under trees on higher ground triggered another lead change. With all drivers running on super-soft rubber it proved to be treacherous.

Evans had a half spin at an icy hairpin and dropped several seconds, with the hit to his confidence then costing more. “I was proper steady – it just started to go [and] I couldn’t recover,” he rued. “I was on the ice, and it just went a margin too far.”

Ogier used all his experience to master the icy section en route to a third stage win of the rally. He was 14.7s faster than Evans to take the lead by 6.8s, which he then extended by winning the final stage of the day too.

“I must say I had to fight for that because earlier I didn’t have a mega feeling,” admitted Ogier. “I was a little bit on the back foot; with the tricky conditions I couldn’t really find the perfect rhythm but the last two stages were better for me.”

Second fastest to Ogier on both SS8 and SS9, Adrien Fourmaux lies third overnight. On his Hyundai debut, he is just 1.6s behind second-placed Evans, having dropped 9.2s to his rival on the opening stage of the loop when hampered by a dirtier road. “It’s been a really good afternoon for us so I’m really positive,” he surmised.

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Fourmaux flew to be on the tail of Evans in second

Fourmaux is currently all that stands between a Toyota clean sweep of the podium positions, as he holds a 24.3s advantage over the third GR Yaris of Kalle Rovanperä. The returning two-time world champion could not back up his scratch time in the day’s opener, reckoning the WRC’s new tires for 2025 were not suiting his driving style in drier conditions.

The second Hyundai of Ott Tänak is fifth, another 8.8s back. Other than a moment on the morning’s last stage, which cost his i20 N a lot of bodywork but little time, he ran steadily through the day’s stages, opting for a relatively cautious approach while adapting to the new rubber.

M-sport’s Grégoire Munster completes the top six. After climbing to fourth with an inspired tire choice through the morning, Munster slipped back in the afternoon’s stages. He dropped more than 45s after suffering a puncture on SS8 which he was at a loss to explain. “I was on a straight uphill and then suddenly we lost pressure. We didn’t hit anything,” he reckoned.

Munster is now 46.4s behind Tänak and has an under-the-weather Takamoto Katsuta breathing down his neck, just 4s further adrift.

Sami Pajari makes it five Toyotas in the top eight, but is nearly two minutes behind Katsuta after taking a much more cautious approach through the afternoon’s stages.

Pajari is, however, ahead of world champion Thierry Neuville who endured a very difficult day. The overnight leader dropped nearly two minutes on the day’s third stage when he overshot a hairpin and damaged his Hyundai’s suspension. Incredibly, he repeated the feat in exactly the same spot on the second pass, although this time it was caused by a puncture on his front-left.

“I was punctured far before,” Neuville explained. “We tried to go as far as we could and as fast as we could but at some point the tire just went, so yeah, we went straight again. I don’t know if we should have stopped and changed it or not – it’s hard to say.”

The result was the same: another two minutes dropped, leaving Neuville almost four minutes off the pace in ninth overall.

In WRC2, Yohan Rossel (Citroën C2) jumped the non-scoring Nikolay Gryazin (Škoda Fabia RS) on the final stage, having been faster on all of the day’s tests. Gryazin was hampered by choosing studded rubber for the afternoon’s stages, but remains more than a minute ahead of Gus Greensmith’s Škoda, also not scoring points this week, which had earlier lapsed into two-wheel drive for a spell.

Eric Camilli (Hyundai i20 N) is heading a close battle with Rossel’s younger brother Leo for fourth in RC2 and second of the points scorers.

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