Sébastien Ogier looks to already be out of contention to win the Central European Rally after suffering a front-right puncture on Friday’s first stage.
The Toyota driver came into the day in third place, with Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville leading M-Sport Ford’s Ott Tänak by 1.2 seconds and with Ogier a further 4.6s behind.
A wet and cold Vlachovo Březí stage faced the drivers, and they had recced the Czech test when it was dry. That made the pacenotes harder to use and also meant Toyota’s Kalle Rovanperä had the cleanest road as the first in the running order.
He set a benchmark time of 7m08.2s, and Lappi got closest as he trailed him by 1.8s. Rovanperä’s team-mate and title rival Elfyn Evans had struggled on Thursday’s two stages and already dropped over 13s down in eighth place, but he was third fastest through SS3. That brought him up to fourth place overall, with Neuville’s lead reduced to 1.4s by Rovanperä and with Tänak in third.
Neuville, who was fourth fastest, ended the stage unhappy with a fogged up windshield.
“I was struggling to see the road,” he said. “I opened all the windows that I could to get some air in, but it’s getting very, very dirty. It was a clean run through for us, but it’s a bit of an appeal as well to the spectators because they have removed some anticuts and suddenly the road was full of mud and it was a big surprise. They should keep them in place, because for us it’s really dangerous.”
The big story though was Ogier’s demise, and although he did not know when he picked up his front-right puncture he was losing time from very early on the stage. At the first split he was 11.9s off the pace, that had grown to 24.8s by split two and he reached the finish in a time 41.9s slower than Rovanperä’s.
“Unbelievable, what can I say?” an exasperated Ogier commented afterwards.
In WRC2, Gus Greensmith also puncutred but worse befell Yohan Rossel who slid off the road and the instant loss of grip as he headed onto the grass sent the PH Sport driver’s Citroën C3 Rally2 in a straight line, into the trees and out of the rally.
