Sébastien Ogier remains atop the Rally Portugal standings with three stages to go, though an emphatic stage win on Paredes from Kalle Rovanperä has cut his lead to 16.3s.
Rovanperä was quickest out the blocks on Sunday morning, going 11.1s faster than Ogier on the first pass of Paredes.
“It didn’t feel so good in the car so I’m a bit surprised by the time,” said Rovanperä. “I don’t know what the others have been doing because I could have been much faster.”
Ogier admitted to being cautious: “I was not really taking the risk with the banks for punctures,” he said. And from that point on he kept his younger teammate at bay, going faster than Rovanperä on Fafe.
Behind the lead Toyotas, erstwhile rally leader Ott Tänak – who lost the top spot to a power steering failure late on Saturday – is fastest in the Sunday rankings, 1.1s up on Rovanperä. He still has a chance to catch the latter GR Yaris Rally1 for second place overall, the gap between them only 7.4s.
Ott Tänak returned to his pace-setting ways once Hyundai fixed the broken power steering on his i20 N Rally1
“We had a go,” said Tänak. Indicating he was still feeling the after effects of driving with no power steering on Saturday afternoon, the 2019 world champion added: “A bit hard on the jump landing but this body is dead anyway, so that’s the way it is. It’s been tough.
“I’m already pushing quite a bit so I don’t know much more we can do.”
Road sweeping was once again in full effect on the first pass of stages, as Thierry Neuville and Takamoto Katsuta both struggled to match the pace of the frontrunners starting behind them on the road.
“There’s lots of cleaning, I guess not much we can do,” said Neuville, who fell 14s adrift of Tänak after the first pass of Sunday’s stages.
Katsuta looked ragged for much of the morning, cutting a frustrated finish after completing the Paredes stages and smacking a bank on Fafe – though he insisted the latter was on purpose and a tried-and-tested line through the turn.
Adrien Fourmaux was a case in point of the road sweeping effect: having retired on Friday, all his eggs are in the Super Sunday basket – but as first car on the road, he could only muster eight-fastest on the Sunday leaderboard after three stages, 46.7s off the pace.
Elfyn Evans is catching Toyota teammate Sami Pajari for sixth overall, cutting the gap from 17.5s to just 3.2s.
Elfyn Evans appears set to concede significant ground in the title race to Rovanperä for the second rally in a row
After struggling to make a dent on the leaderboard for the past two days, Evans elected to start experimenting with his driving style to see if he could extract more speed – not from the car but rather from himself.
“We tried to change the style a little bit to see if it works,” said Evans. “Nothing’s changed with the car. It’s early days yet.”
Eighth-placed Josh McErlean has extended his advantage over M-Sport teammate Grégoire Munster to 42.4s, even with intercom issues on Paredes which left co-driver Eoin Treacy resorting to hand signals.
Oliver Solberg still leads WRC2 but behind, the battle for second took a twist: Yohan Rossel had begun cutting into Gus Greensmith’s advantage on Saturday afternoon and finally moved past the Škoda driver on Felgueiras.
Greensmith was suffering both from a long brake pedal and the side-effects of taking an extra spare wheel.
“That was the first two stages,” said Greensmith of his brake issue. “It’s a little bit better now. The main thing is that since we’ve put a second spare [wheel] in the back, the balance is terrible. We made a change for this one and it’s made it worse, so back to the drawing board.”
