Kalle Rovanperä has topped shakedown ahead of this weekend’s Croatia Rally, beating Ott Tänak to the top spot.
Rally México winner and championship leader Sébastien Ogier opened proceedings for the Rally1 cars on shakedown and his first pass came through with a time of 1m58.3seconds.
But for his team-mate Elfyn Evans it was a less than ideal start under the sunny skies, as shortly into his first pass he picked up an issue, crawling through the remainder of the test.
However, he remained tight lipped on the problem once he got to stop control, just shy of a minute down on the benchmark effort set by Tänak’s at the time.
The Hyundais were branding a very touching livery to Craig Breen, with the i20 N Rally1 car featuring the Irish flag across the bodywork.
Esapekka Lappi expressed his emotion towards the livery and spoke of the challenge ahead this weekend.
“The car looks amazing. The team did an amazing job to make it look like this at such short notice,” he said.
“I said to Janne [Ferm, co-driver] that I was shaking at the finish line, and not because I pushed hard. Every one of us takes it in different ways and for me it’s tough.”
Thierry Neuville also paid tribute to his late teammate as he ended his first run, saying he and the rest of the service park need to ‘keep going’ in Breen’s honor.
“We are all very sorry for what happened,” he explained.
“It’s going to be a tough rally for everybody but as a team and as a rally family we need to be strong and keep going. That is what Craig would have wanted.”
No one could beat Tänak’s 1m54.7s attempt on the first pass, but the times began to fall as each run progressed.
Rovanperä set the fastest time with a 1m52.8s, getting the better of Tänak by 0.8s.
Meanwhile Ogier matched the second fastest time and ended joint second with Lappi following behind in fourth.
Takamoto Katsuta ended up fifth and 0.5s behind the Hyundai driver, setting his fastest time on the third and final run with Neuville sixth, a further 0.2s behind.
Pierre-Louis Loubet was seventh, having set his best time on the second of his three runs.
Following his early trouble, Evans did not head out again.
Follow all the action live throughout the entire Rally México weekend with exclusive insight on DirtFish Live Center.
