Kalle Rovanperä has overhauled his Toyota team-mate Elfyn Evans for fourth place on Rally Sweden, now lying just 12.1 seconds shy of the podium, as Craig Breen once again extended his lead.
Rovanperä was hampered on Friday as the first car on the road but relieved of the dubious honor of road sweeping, the world champion is on more even footing with his rivals on Saturday.
But, despite going second-quickest on SS10 Floda, Rovanperä wasn’t a happy man at the end of the stage – unsure whether it was a change in suspension setup or just general car characteristics that were holding him back.
“The car is really s*** to drive, I lose so much time everywhere,” he said.
“I don’t know if we make a mistake on the setup of if it’s not good in these type of conditions but I could go so much faster, losing easy seconds.”
He was four seconds quicker than Evans though to move 1.2s ahead, while he shaded Thierry Neuville by two tenths to leave 4.8s covering fourth to sixth positions.
“It’s hard to know how much you can attack, there’s a lot of fresh snow in places,” Neuville commented.
“And with the sun in the face it’s not easy to see the road as well. But we had a good run.”
A downbeat Evans added: “I didn’t have a good feeling to be honest, so it’s not a surprise.”
Esapekka Lappi’s pace has dropped off compared to Friday too as he lost 5.9s to Rovanperä with only the sixth fastest time.
“I was just too slow,” he rued. “Yeah… on the fast I cannot push how I want to so we need to go back the direction where we were yesterday.”
At the very front, Breen has upped his lead to 5.7s after setting the quickest time on SS10, 1.1s up on Ott Tänak who said he cannot push any more.
“It feels very uncomfortable already even in some very easy places. It’s not much fun but I try hard,” Tänak said.
Interestingly, aside from Breen’s scorching pace, Rovanperä’s Toyota, Neuville’s Hyundai and Tänak’s Ford were split by just three tenths.
“That was nice,” Breen said.
“It’s what kid’s dreams are made of driving in these conditions at that kind of speed. A hell of a lot of fun.”
