Kalle Rovanperä has roared into the lead of Rally New Zealand on Saturday’s second stage as erstwhile leader Elfyn Evans slid, whacked a bank and spun.
Evans led the rally by 2.8 seconds over Ott Tänak after the opening stage of the day, so was under significant pressure as he headed onto Puhoi.
But in the treacherously slippy and muddy conditions, Evans got far too big a slide on through a sweeping right-hander and the rear of his Toyota began to get away from him.
He therefore headed towards the bank on the inside, smacked it and spun a full 360 degrees.
It was a hairy moment but Evans was able to drive on, albeit losing over half a minute and freefalling down the leaderboard to fourth.
The damage caused was significant – the front bumper of the GR Yaris Rally1 missing and some steam coming out of the engine when he reached the end of the stage. The rear tailgate was also missing, while through the stage Evans reported the water pressure was low and the brake pedal was going to the floor.
Evans pulled away from the stop-line in electric mode, but it remains to be seen if he will make SS10.
Rovanperä admitted he “wasn’t happy” about what happened to his team-mate, but yet again the 22-year-old – who is celebrating his birthday today – has come alive in the rain.
“I’m pushing really hard, I just try to be clean,” said the new leader. “I was not so clean on this stage, I went a bit wide in places.”
Rovanperä’s advantage is 4.6s over Tänak with Sébastien Ogier 6.5s behind in third, but crucially he is now in prime position to claim the World Rally Championship title this weekend.
“We can’t do anything, we have no speed,” said a frustrated Tänak. “It’s nothing new.”
Gus Greensmith is refusing to let Thierry Neuville, who vaulted past him on the previous stage, run away in fifth position – hitting back on SS9 to trim the deficit to one second.
But Greensmith wasn’t happy, struggling in conditions he described as “bad”.
“It’s really hard to make the car do anything at all, it’s not nice,” he said.
However things were worse for Neuville.
“We have a technical problem,” he said, “we’ll try to get it back to service and we’ll see.”
Oliver Solberg’s advantage over Takamoto Katsuta was more than halved on SS9 as Katsuta was 10.1s quicker than his Hyundai-driving rival.
“So much understeer and I didn’t have any confidence at all to push,” explained Solberg, every time I tried to push the front just washed away.”
