Kalle Rovanperä has dumped Toyota team-mate Elfyn Evans off the podium, stealing third place on the second stage of Sunday morning on the Ypres Rally.
SS18 was delayed by 20 minutes, with Pierre-Louis Loubet being the first to go into the Francorchamps test at 9.28am local time.
Rovanperä was undeterred by the delay as he romped through the stage, which utilized the famous Eau Rouge section of the Spa-Francorchamps circuit as well as the pitlane and the rallycross track, in a time faster than his team mates.
“To be honest it was quite good,” said Rovanperä of his performance.
“Really, really difficult stage I just tried to be clean. Let’s see what Elfyn does but it looked to be quite an OK run.”
Evans was a hefty 5.6 seconds slower than Rovanperä, meaning he is now down to fourth with a 3.9s deficit to overturn on the final two stages.
It’s potentially a really costly loss of position as it lessens the points gain Evans was going to make on Sébastien Ogier who’s 10.2s behind in fifth.
Asked if he’d had any sort of problem that would explain his time loss, Evans said: “Nothing in particular. I was too wild in the previous one, tried to clean it up but obviously didn’t push enough.”
Ogier meanwhile has refocused his efforts on the powerstage after a rear-left puncture on SS17 that has ejected him from the podium battle.
“Unfortunately the puncture on the first one took away from the battle, so for sure we have to focus on the powerstage,” he said.
Photo: Hyundai Motorsport
Thierry Neuville continues to lead the event, despite dropping 1.4s to Craig Breen on Francorchamps. However with a 14.9s advantage and just two stages remaining, that’s of no concern to the local hero.
“I tried to be very concentrated on the road, just avoiding the cuts and the stones, I was quite careful,” said Neuville, who’s on the brink of a famous victory.
Breen, who was third fastest on SS18, kept his i20 Coupe WRC “in the middle of the road” and was annoyed with himself for his brief striking of a bank on SS17.
“That was very silly what I did this morning,” he said, referencing the moment. “I should’ve been so much more alert there but anyway we survived.”
The other Hyundai of Ott Tänak was the fastest driver on the stage, 0.5s up on Rovanperä.
“I would say to drive in that place it would be a bucket list place,” he said. “But we’d maybe need another 500 horsepower and four gears then it would be interesting!”
SS18 times
1 Ott Tänak/Martin Järveoja (Hyundai) 6m56.9s
2 Kalle Rovanperä/Jonne Halttunen (Toyota) +0.5s
3 Craig Breen/Paul Nagle (Hyundai) +2.9s
4 Thierry Neuville/Martijn Wydaeghe (Hyundai) +4.3s
5 Sébastien Ogier/Julian Ingrassia (Toyota) +5.4s
6 Elfyn Evans/Scott Martin (Toyota) +6.1s
Leading positions after SS18
1 Neuville/Wydaeghe 2h18m27.6s
2 Breen/Nagle +14.9s
3 Rovanperä/Halttunen +40.5s
4 Evans/Martin +44.4s
5 Ogier/Ingrassia +54.6s
6 Tänak/Järveoja +3m50.8s
7 Yohan Rossel/Alexandre Coria (Citroën) +11m25.5s
8 Pieter Jan Michiel Cracco/Jaspen Vermeulen (Škoda) +11m58.3s
9 Fabian Kreim/Frank Christian (Volkswagen) +12m21.6s
10 Sebastien Bedoret/Francois Gilbert (Škoda) +12m28.7s
