The second day of the Ypres Rally began with the event’s longest stage – the 16-mile Hollebeke – and it was Craig Breen who set the pace while Ott Tänak lost his third place to a puncture.
Tänak was setting competitive split times through the first half of the stage until he noticed an issue on one of his wheels and found a place to stop to check. It cost him two-and-a-half minutes as the jack used to lift the car failed and, with three-minute gaps between drivers going onto the stage, it meant he got moving again just ahead of Hyundai team-mate Breen.
For a kilometer, Breen had to contend with Tänak driving in front of him until he found a place to pull over. Despite the distraction, Breen still went faster through the splits than rally-leading team-mate Thierry Neuville who was next on the road, and he took the stage win.
Photo: Hyundai Motorsport
“I’ll be interested to see what he [Tänak] says if I held him up for that long,” said a frustrated Breen.
“He physically wasn’t in front of me for a long time, but he was kicking up all the dust and all this s*** on the road. He did what he had to do, but I’d like to see him in that position.”
Tänak, who dropped to seventh overall with that issue, said that “when I got the message I stopped immediately, but I didn’t know” that he was holding up Breen. Neuville, who went 2.8 seconds slower than Breen, now has a lead of 4.8s up front.
“I was happy with my performance,” Neuville said. “The road was quite slippy and I didn’t take any risks, to be honest.
“It’s the longest stage of the rally, I had a clean run through, but the road is getting quite dirty as well with a lot of leaves on the road. I just didn’t want to take any risks.”
The battle for what was fourth place before Tänak’s tire change, and to be the top Toyota driver, included three cars spread by 6.8s going into Saturday.
Photo: Toyota Gazoo Racing
Elfyn Evans was the fastest of the three on SS9 Hollebeke, and second fastest overall behind Breen, and that enabled him to move back past team-mate Kalle Rovanperä for what is now third by 2.5s after conceding a position to him by 0.8s on the last stage of Friday.
Evans said he was “still struggling a bit in the junctions, but otherwise it’s OK”, while Rovanperä went into more detail.
“First time here, the first loop is really difficult,” Rovanperä said. “There’s so many surprises that it’s not so enjoyable.
“But yeah it’s OK. We made some changes from yesterday to the set-up, and I think maybe it’s a bit better so let’s try to just continue like this.”
Sébastien Ogier was the first of the factory Toyota trio onto the stage and also the slowest, but only 0.1s off Rovanperä’s pace.
Takamoto Katsuta continued a sensible drive in the fourth Toyota Yaris WRC, which is not eligible for manufacturer points, as he learned to work with his stand-in co-driver Keaton Williams. However he was 13.9s slower than Ogier, and 18.9s slower than Breen. He does move up into sixth place at the expense of Tänak.
M-Sport Ford’s Gus Greensmith was first on the road as a result of his day-one retirement where he slid into a deep ditch, and he swept away grass and mud left by farmers that cross the stage.
His cleaning of the stage was a gift to his rivals, as Greensmith said he opted not to take risks with any cutting – which would have brought some mud and dirt back onto the road.
He was the only driver to pick two hard compound tires and four softs, which was the same strategy chosen by Toyota’s drivers when opening the road on Friday. Every other World Rally Car runner went for Pirelli’s hard tire on all four wheels.
Photo: Hyundai Motorsport
Pierre-Louis Loubet carried two softs as spares rather than hards, but he might not get to use those as 13 miles into the stage he went sideways into a ditch.
Spectators tried helping the 2C Competition Hyundai driver get back on the road, with 10 of them attempting to pull the front-end out using their combined muscle power alone, but with Loubet’s left-hand wheels in the air he was unable to escape the ditch.
Belgian Rally Championship competitor Sébastien Bedoret was the fastest Rally2 driver on SS9 in his Škoda Fabia Rally2 evo, outpacing Pieter Jan Michiel Cracco by 8.1s to extend his BRC lead over the felow Škoda driver.
M-Sport’s Teemu Suninen was the next best, and the fastest of the WRC2 runners, while shipping 17.3s to Bedoret on Hollebeke dropped Hyundai’s Oliver Solberg behind the stage pacesetter and down to 10th in the overall classification. Yohan Rossell still leads the WRC class in eighth place overall.
SS9 times
1 Craig Breen/Paul Nagle (Hyundai) +13m30.7s
2 Elfyn Evans/Scott Martin (Toyota) +1.6s
3 Thierry Neuville/Martijn Wydaeghe (Hyundai) +2.8s
4 Kalle Rovanperä/Jonne Halttunen (Toyota) +4.9s
5 Sébastien Ogier/Julien Ingrassia (Toyota) +5s
6 Takamoto Katsuta/Keaton Williams (Toyota) +18.9s
Leading positions after SS9
1 Neuville/Wydaeghe 1h18m00.5s
2 Breen/Nagle +4.8s
3 Evans/Martin +32.2s
4 Rovanperä/Halttunen +34.7s
5 Ogier/Ingrassia +41.6s
6 Katsuta/Williams +1m40.6s
7 Ott Tänak/Martin Järveoja (Hyundai) +3m32.8s
8 Yohan Rossel/Alexandre Coria (Citroën) +6m34.5s
9 Sebastien Bedoret/Francois Gilbert (Škoda) +6m45.8s
10 Oliver Solberg/Aaron Johnston (Hyundai) +5m44.9s
