Pajari crashes out, Rovanperä extends lead

Toyota's hopes of a record-equalling 1-2-3-4-5 finish were ended by a mistake from Sami Pajari

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Toyota’s hopes of a record-equalling 1-2-3-4-5 finish on Rally Islas Canarias are over, as Sami Pajari crashed out on Saturday’s penultimate stage.

Pajari understeered wide on a medium left-hander during the Tejeda test, smashing through an armco barrier and heavily damaging the front-right corner of his GR Yaris Rally1.

Though he tried to continue, he pulled to the side of the road two corners later, the damage to his car terminal.

Had Toyota clinched a top-five lockout, it would have equalled a record set by Lancia on Rally Portugal in 1990.

Kalle Rovanperä stage-winning streak continued unabated, topping all three second passes of Saturday’s stages. Only the day-ending superspecial in Las Palmas stands between him and notching up two perfect days in a row.

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Kalle Rovanperä's consecutive stage win streak now sits at 12

Eight-time world champion Sébastien Ogier simply had no answer for Rovanperä’s pace, though he came only 1.2s and 2.0s away from matching the rally leader on SS10 and SS11 respectively.

But on SS12 Rovanperä was back to his imperious best, topping the times by 4.8s.

“After this weekend this will go maybe to my top three, top five stages,” said Rovanperä of the Tejeda test.

Ogier was happier with his GR Yaris on the afternoon pass: “It’s been a good afternoon, we enjoyed in the car, the balance is better. It looks like the only thing that’s missing is a little bit of speed compared to the leader.”

Championship leader Elfyn Evans continued to fall further adrift of Ogier, the gap between second and third extending to 23s. Pajari’s demise promoted Takamoto Katsuta to fourth place; the Japanese driver hadn’t been challenging his younger teammate on pace beforehand.

“It’s quite a big mess in the beginning,” said Katsuta of his second pass through Tejeda. “I’m not happy at all with my drive. It wasn’t so easy, very different feeling than other stages, I don’t know why. Only many corners I couldn’t get turned in, it was so bad.”

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Adrien Fourmaux's gearbox and differential choices made pre-rally are different to Thierry Neuville and Ott Tänak's, which appears to be helping him outpace his teammates

In the intra-team Hyundai battle Adrien Fourmaux has edged further ahead of reigning world champion Thierry Neuville, even if the latter felt he had “a bit more confidence” after a rally spent chasing a setup-derived workaround to the i20’s ongoing weakness on Canarian asphalt.

Ott Tänak is a further 20.8s behind Neuville, having admitted before the day started he had little motivation to battle over what was originally sixth place before Pajari’s demise.

Grégoire Munster had been leading M-Sport’s charge but dropped out of the top 10 when he overshot a right-hander on Arucas, narrowly avoiding crashing into trees and getting stuck in a ditch instead.

Spectators came to the rescue to pivot and push his stricken Ford Puma back onto the road, losing three minutes in the process and falling to 16th. Munster is now 1m19.4s behind team-mate Josh McErlean, who holds 10th place.

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Both M-Sports have struggled with turn-in, to the point that Josh McErlean has completely disconnected the front anti-roll bar from his Puma

Pajari wasn’t the old driver caught out by Tejeda: Léo Rossel crashed his Citroën out of fourth place in WRC2, overshooting a square left and spearing through a gap into the armco and into a tree.

WRC2 leader Yohan Rossel has been able to resist Alejandro Cachón’s Saturday morning push for the lead, winning all three repeated stages from the morning to push his advantage over the chasing Toyota past the 20-second mark. Nikolay Gryazin is 24s further back in third.

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