Kalle Rovanperä leads Rally of Portugal after a dramatic opening day in which two of his World Rally Championship rivals hit problems.
Ott Tänak, who led Rovanperä at the midday remote tire fitting zone, was first to fall as his front-right tire came off the rim and cost him 50 seconds.
The M-Sport Ford driver – who was without hybrid assistance on the final stage – therefore slipped to sixth by the end of the day, over a minute down on the lead.
But Friday’s biggest victim was championship leader Elfyn Evans, who flew off the road on a fast left-hander on the day’s last gravel stage.
Evans had been sixth overall before he went off.
All of this was effectively white noise to Rovanperä though who safely negotiated the Figueira da Foz superspecial stage to close out the rally’s opening leg with a 10.8-second lead over Dani Sordo.
“We were fast also but took care of the car and tires, so I can be quite happy,” the world champion said. “We are at the end of the day so that’s the main thing.”
Sordo had been just a handful of seconds adrift of the Toyota but an overshoot on SS7 cost him over 10s to the leader. But he swiped a strong 3.4s out of Rovanperä’s to trim the leader’s advantage.
Behind Sordo, the battle for third is fierce with just 1.3s covering three cars.
Thierry Neuville heads the pack as he climbed from fifth to third, lying 0.9s up Pierre-Louis Loubet with team-mate Esapekka Lappi another 0.4s back.
But Neuville will start Saturday’s stages ahead of both Loubet and Lappi in the running order as the road order was dictated by the classification after SS7, not SS8.
Takamoto Katsuta was the other retiree of Friday, parking his Toyota up on the way to the rally’s third stage with a broken alternator.
