Kalle Rovanperä has taken the early lead on Rally Spain, heading off Hyundai’s pair of full-time drivers as road order appeared to play a part in pace on the Els Omells – Maldà opener.
The road was damp after overnight rain, causing difficulties for those running further down the order.
“When it’s wet the day before it’s all muddy in the cuts and it gets pulled out,” explained M-Sport’s Gus Greensmith, who could only muster the 10th fastest time as ninth car on the road.
That played into the hands of Rovanperä, who led the field out as first car on the road despite suggesting it was “not the easiest of conditions” for him either.
Thierry Neuville and Ott Tänak, third and second on the road, were the other way round on the stage classification, 1.2 and 1.5 secnds off the pace respectively.
Despite the small time gap, the Hyundai pair had very different experiences of the opening test.
“Not too bad. Quite OK feeling in the car,” reported Neuville.
But Tänak was less pleased with his i20 N Rally1: “I struggled a lot, there is no feeling at all.”
Eight-time world champion Sébastien Ogier, making his first appearance on an asphalt rally since the Monte Carlo Rally in January, was content with fourth given he had started quite far down the road order.
“Quite an OK time because obviously it’s getting more dirty now,” was the Toyota part-timer’s assessment. “It’s not incredibly bad but there were a couple of corners with lots of mud.”
Ogier was at least more confident than team-mate Elfyn Evans, who wasn’t able to match the pace of the cars that had gone immediately before him. Had the pollution started to affect him as fourth car on the road?
“A little bit,” responded Evans. But it was an abundance of caution that had left him fifth, 2.8s adrift of Rovanperä. “To be honest I was also careful in places; [the time is] not a huge surprise.”
Dani Sordo couldn’t match his Hyundai team-mates for pace, running further down the order. “It is what it is,” he lamented, 4.5s off the top spot in sixth place.
M-Sport’s fleet of Ford Puma Rally1s were the last of the top class cars onto the stage and suffered with mud from the cuts polluting the road.
Craig Breen was the fastest Puma driver, 8.6s off the pace but at least able to usurp Takamoto Katsuta in the fourth Toyota.
He felt lucky to have completed SS1 in one piece, having suffered an impact early on and worried he’d picked up a puncture. “Honestly I was like a newborn calf in there, all over the place,” Breen confessed.
Pierre-Louis Loubet was only 0.1s behind Katsuta in ninth overall, 3.6s up on Greensmith.
Adrien Fourmaux was 11th on his first stage back in the WRC after missing the rallies in Greece and New Zealand, and was 13.5s off the pace.
