Sébastien Ogier has retaken the lead on Rally Spain, winning stage five to pass Thierry Neuville for the top spot.
Eight-time world champion Ogier went 3.7 seconds faster than Neuville on Els Omells – Maldà 2 to reclaim his place at the top of the leaderboard, which Neuville had taken from him on the previous test.
“It’s a good stage obviously when you win it!” Ogier quipped.
All wasn’t quite as positive in Neuville’s cockpit; his notes had overcompensated for the mud that had permeated the morning pass of Els Omells and wasn’t as prominent second time around.
“I had much more dirt in my notes than it actually was, so I couldn’t go faster if I was trusting the notes,” he said.
Following an alternator belt scare after SS4 and hybrid deployment issues earlier in the morning, Ott Tänak’s Hyundai i20 N Rally1 was back to full health again on stage five, going second-quickest.
That puts pressure onto third-placed Kalle Rovanperä, who now has only 0.4s in hand over the 2019 world champion.
Elfyn Evans in the third Toyota continues to fall further adrift of the leaders, ceding another 2.7s to Ogier and is now 6.6s away from the podium.
“We all have to discover now our dry cars,” said Evans, highlighting the improved conditions. “A bit of a shell-shock in there but all OK.”
Dani Sordo showed some improvement from his morning efforts, tying for third-fastest time with Evans. But the damage may have already been done on the tricky morning loop – he’s currently 13.9s adrift of Evans.
“I tried my best. I can’t do much better,” said the sixth-placed Sordo of his stage five effort.
Takamoto Katsuta’s seventh place doesn’t look particularly safe, as Craig Breen finally began to make some inroads after a subdued Friday morning.
After struggling with overly conservative pacenotes on the first pass, Breen felt he was “heading in a bit of a better direction,” and managed to cut 1.5s out of Katsuta’s advantage.
But it wasn’t all good news, even if the gap had shrunk to 5.7s.
“Honestly I struggled a lot with the car in there,” said Breen. “There’s for sure some changes I’d like to do, but at least we’re in the ballpark now.”
Being the second slowest Rally1 contenders wasn’t the ideal start to Adrien Fourmaux’s Friday afternoon, as he dropped 1.7s to M-Sport Ford team-mate Gus Greensmith in the battle for ninth.
Fourmaux put that down to the “conditions” but also admitted he wasn’t willing to put it all on the line either: “I’m still not confident enough to take some cuts but it’s positive. It’s not bad.”
A fire had broken out in Pierre-Louis Loubet’s M-Sport Ford Puma Rally1 after SS4 but he confirmed after SS5 the issues had been remedied, allowing him to press on in a solitary 11th place overall.
“The team did a fantastic job to fix everything, so thanks to them for the fantastic work. We hope to be able to do a good afternoon for them.”
