Sami Pajari became Rally del Paraguay’s fourth different leader of the opening day after Elfyn Evans suffered a puncture on Friday’s penultimate stage.
Pajari holds an 11.9-second lead over Hayden Paddon after a dramatic day that began with Takamoto Katsuta crashing out on the opening stage. Thierry Neuville and Sébastien Ogier were the next to fall, both with suspension failure – Neuville’s caused by damage from flailing rubber, and Ogier’s after hitting a bank – as tire delaminations and punctures became the major talking points.
The rear-right tire on Evans’ Toyota delaminated about half-way through the 21-mile SS7 Yerbateras. Evans and co-driver Scott Martin opted not to stop and continued to the end, managing to lose only just over a minute, some 30s less than a stop would have cost.
Evans was not the only one to suffer on a dramatic stage when Pajari and fellow Toyota driver Oliver Solberg were the only Rally1 entries to go cleanly through, the pair recording almost identical times, only 0.1s apart.
“I think it’s a lottery if you take a puncture or not so I need to be happy with how we did,” admitted Pajari. “But we are still very early in this rally and a lot of things have happened already.”
Hayden Paddon, who assumed the lead on SS3 when Solberg hit trouble before dropping to second with a puncture on SS6, suffered another failure on SS7. But Paddon’s carcass held together reasonably for most of the stage, only failing completely in the last mile or two. As such he lost only 20.8s to Pajari and therefore held second overall as Evans dropped to third.
“It’s never easy but that’s our job as rally drivers – we have to try to manage the situation,” said Paddon, who is 44.4s ahead of third-placed Evans.
Pajari overcame early water leak to steer clear of further trouble and hold overnight lead
Evans reflected: “Obviously a lot’s been happening for a lot of people here. The tire situation is somehow not a surprise but it’s not for this level.”
Paddon’s team-mate Adrien Fourmaux dropped 49.6s to Pajari on SS7 but that could be considered a success given that both of the Frenchman’s rear tires deflated.
“To be fair, I knew before the stage, we had too many weird things on the tires,” Fourmaux sighed. “We had four tires with damage on it.”
He added, angrily: “We cannot play with these tools, it’s not possible. I cannot do it – some things I cannot manage. It’s like playing casino.”
Fourmaux won four of the day’s eight stages and actually climbed to fourth overall on the penultimate test, approaching two minutes down on leader Pajari.
Fourmaux won more stages than anyone but lies fourth overall, nearly two minutes off the lead
That was because M-Sport’s Josh McErlean stopped to change a wheel on SS7, losing over two minutes. Having started the stage less than a second behind Pajari, the Irishman ended the day more than two minutes off the lead in fifth overall.
The leading WRC2 drivers of home favorite Diego Domínguez and Gus Greensmith lie sixth and seventh in their Toyota GR Yaris Rally2s. Championship leader Robert Virves lost more than an hour after crashing on the opening stage, while punctures were a common theme in the second-tier field too.
Solberg lies eighth overall overnight, three-and-a-half minutes down on the leader. He won the rally’s opening two stages before losing nearly four minutes to a tricky-to-recover-from stall and a puncture on SS3. The Swede then gradually climbed back up the leaderboard with a clean afternoon.
The Rally2 cars of Marco Bulacia and Romet Jürgenson round out the top 10 after the opening day.
The last of the Rally1 entries to complete the day’s mileage was Jon Armstrong’s Ford Puma. Armstrong was late out of midday service where the M-Sport crew had to effect significant front-end repairs after the damage caused by a puncture on SS3. He lies 14th overall, more than six minutes off the pace.
