Kalle Rovanperä’s lead on Rally Poland has reached almost double digits, as Toyota team-mate Elfyn Evans suffered a delamination that cost him around 10 seconds.
Toyota’s lead pairing had started Saturday afternoon only a tenth apart but Rovanperä proceeded to win all four stages in the afternoon, extending his advantage over Hyundai’s Andreas Mikkelsen to 9.6s.
Despite building the largest cushion of any driver in the top spot so far, Rovanperä is not confident he’ll be able to keep up his pace on Sunday: “I think tomorrow will be the toughest with the notes and everything,” said the reigning world champion. “We made one of the stages Thursday after the shakedown so I don’t think it will be so easy tomorrow.
Evans had looked set to battle Rovanperä for top spot but was 8.9s off the pace on stage 13, as the right-rear tire on his GR Yaris Rally1 delaminated in the final sector and damaged the surrounding bodywork.
Mikkelsen is still learning how hard he can lean on the aerodynamics of the i20 N Rally1 in fast corners – this is his first gravel event of the season
That promoted Mikkelsen back to second place, only 0.1s behind the rally leader, though he ultimately couldn’t quite find the right balance of where to push and couldn’t match the lead Toyota later in the loop.
“I tried a bit too hard there, it was not so efficient,” said Mikkelsen after the second pass of Czarne, the last stage of Saturday’s itinerary. “But I had to try.”
Adrien Fourmaux wrapped up a somewhat lonely fourth place, unable to keep pace with the lead trio but comfortably ahead of the battle for fifth place. He’d gambled on taking a full complement of soft tires, rather than the mix of softs and hards utilized by rivals from other teams,
Thierry Neuville fell agonizingly short of nicking fifth place away from Rally1 debutant Mārtiņš Sesks, the pair finishing the day only 0.1s apart.
Sesks is running a Ford Puma without a hybrid unit and thus faced a slight power disadvantage under acceleration – yet combined with his lack of top-level experience, he fended off the current championship leader for a top five slot overnight, robbing Neuville of two important points in his bid for a first drivers’ championship title.
So long as he finishes the rally on Sunday, Sesks has already banked eight points on his Rally1 debut by pipping Neuville to fifth place overnight
Grégoire Munster was dropped by Neuville earlier on Saturday but succeeded in his own goal of keeping Takamoto Katsuta at bay for seventh, even extending his advantage over the third Toyota.
While the second points-scoring M-Sport driver was thoroughly enjoying Poland’s fast gravel stages, Katsuta was at the other end of the spectrum, struggling with opening the road after the restarting Ott Tänak chose to retire at midday service and prepare for a Sunday attack instead. Katsuta’s hopes of progressing up the leaderboard were not helped by a tire coming off the rim on Saturday’s penultimate stage, Gołdap.
Sami Pajari continues to preserve a comfortable lead in WRC2, allowing the podium battlers behind to reduce his lead slightly to 26.3s but otherwise remained in control of the main support class.
After local hero Kajetan Kajetanowicz retired from accident damage at midday service a three-way battle was on for the remaining podium places.
First to trip over in the podium battle was Josh McErlean, who had already lost third place in the morning but then ceded another 11.8s the second pass of Świętajno after a spin.
Oliver Solberg was on a charge come Saturday afternoon, aiming to make up for struggles earlier in the event
Robert Virves, making only his second start of the year, initially held second place but a determined Oliver Solberg was on a charge, winning the last two stages of the day to nick the position away at the end of Saturday’s action.
After topping the Czarne test by 4.2s, Solberg hinted that he’d thrown caution to the win to make his way up the leaderboard: “I tried to push. I was like, you know what, f*** it, I don’t care anymore,” said Solberg at the finish line. “I’ve been so unhappy all weekend, the car has not been easy to drive all weekend. I just let loose sometimes. But I can’t drive like that the whole rally, just to be clear!”
Virves ends Saturday 3.1s adrift of Solberg but his podium place looks relatively safe, holding a 23.7s gap to McErlean behind. Pierre-Louis Loubet, who won the WRC2 title in 2019, was briefly fourth after McErlean’s spin but lost the place to his Toksport team-mate on Saturday’s last stage.
