Kalle Rovanperä leads Central European Rally by nearly half-a-minute over World Rally Championship title rival Elfyn Evans, but Hyundai’s Esapekka Lappi has crashed out.
Lappi had been running second overall but left the road and ended up in a field less than a mile from the start of SS5.
The start of SS5 was delayed and it led to it being drier when the Rally1 crews went in. Rovanperä overshot a downhill right-hander but still set the pace.
Evans felt the stage was a little narrow but carried enough confident between the trees and through the tight corners to go second fastest, 6.4s off the pace, with erstwhile leader Neuville 12s slower than Rovanperä in third. That meant he lost second place in the rally to Evans by 0.8s, with M-Sport Ford’s Ott Tänak 43.8s off the lead in fourth.
Katsuta is now up to fifth, 5.9s ahead of Hyundai’s Teemu Suninen, with Tänak’s team-mate Grégoire Munster a further 7.7s behind on his second outing in a Rally1 car.
After a puncture on Friday’s opening stage, Sébastien Ogier said he had no motivation. He’s eighth, behind Pierre-Louis Loubet on his first outing with Benjamin Veillas.
There was considerably more drama in WRC2. The mostly costly mistake came on SS4 by Andreas Mikkelsen, who was not expecting to find gravel on the inside of a right-hander 4.47 miles in and after his rear wheels slid onto the grass at the exit of the corner it then sent his Škoda sideways into the trees.
He incurred suspension damage and lost 10 minutes over the remaining 10.3 miles, and then had to work on some pretty big repairs on the road section that followed. He did however manage to complete SS5.
Inheriting the class lead from him was the Hyundai-driving Emil Lindholm, despite being 10s off the pace as the joint third fastest Rally2 driver through after Nikola Gryazin and Adrien Fourmaux (who had an SS3 puncture) and matched with Alejandro Cachón.
