Kalle Rovanperä has shaken off Elfyn Evans in the fight at the front of Secto Rally Finland, who has instead had to worry about Sébastien Ogier at the end of Friday.
Across the morning loop, Rovanperä and Evans were embroiled in a back-and-forth battle that Rovanperä narrowly had the advantage in – leading Evans by 0.2 seconds at service.
But over the afternoon, the world champion got the hammer down. Although his lead was briefly clipped on SS8 Myhinpää, that was explained by worsening weather making conditions trickier for each passing car.
He felt like he should have been faster but Rovanperä ended the day with an 8.0s advantage over Evans, with just 8.6s covering the top three overnight.
“Tomorrow should be quite interesting,” the reigning world champion predicted.
“It’s really tight with the top guys now, the gaps are really small, so it’s going to be like starting from zero I think.
Instead of battling Rovanperä, Evans has found himself peering down the timesheets at his other team-mate, Ogier, who’s just 0.6s in arrears heading into Saturday.
“Tomorrow will be a big day,” Ogier said, echoing his fellow world champion team-mate. “Looking forward to it as there are very amazing stages. Let’s hope the weather is not too crazy.”
Thierry Neuville admitted he was “focused on just surviving” after the exit of Hyundai team-mate Esapekka Lappi on the afternoon’s first stage – Lappi bouncing out of some ruts and ripping his rear-right wheel off against a tree.
The championship leader is the only Hyundai left in the running after Ott Tänak’s earlier accident, and the Estonian will not restart the rally on Saturday or Sunday either.
That means Hyundai is in a difficult position from a manufacturers’ championship perspective – but at least for Neuville’s own drivers’ title ambitions, he has moved up to fourth overall and just two places back from title rival Evans.
After what he called a “useless” morning, battling to find a setup after not enjoying a pre-event test, Adrien Fourmaux’s pace and feeling improved in the afternoon as he ended the day in fifth place.
“Now I am not fighting with the car, I can drive how I want on the stage so that is much better,” he said after SS6.
“At least now we are there and we continue.”
Fourmaux is however in no man’s land on the leaderboard, 23.0s behind Neuville but almost 42.5s ahead of Sami Pajari.
After losing his rear wing in the morning, Pajari’s potential had been masked. But with a fully operational Toyota at his disposal, he started punching in some impressive times and claimed his first-ever WRC stage win on the second pass of Ruuhimäki.
“Oi-oi-oi… come on!” Pajari beamed, hugging co-driver Enni Mälkonen and then shaking the TV camera.
“I don’t know what to say – what a rollercoaster of emotions this day has been! Honestly the first two brakings of the stage I thought I was too slow, I think the rest of the stage was quite good. Thank you everyone – all the sponsors and supporters and Toyota, thank you!”
Grégoire Munster is seventh place overnight, and hinted he had an issue on Friday afternoon but remained tight-lipped about what exactly it was.
The Luxembourger is nearly two minutes down on the leader after 10 of 20 stages.
Oliver Solberg leads WRC2 after a commanding day aboard his Škoda, 21.3s ahead of Toyota team principal Jari-Matti Latvala.
Latvala proved the spark is still there with an impressive display in his GR Yaris Rally2, although judging the battle was difficult given he was running half an hour behind Solberg in the running order.
2022 Junior WRC champion Robert Virves is third in a Škoda, while Gus Greensmith crashed out of seventh place and basically ended his fading hopes of claiming this year’s WRC2 title.
