Kalle Rovanperä has stolen the lead of Safari Rally Kenya from Thierry Neuville after punching in his second stage win in succession.
Rovanperä trailed Neuville by 5.1 seconds ahead of the afternoon loop in Kenya, hampered slightly by lots of dust filling the cockpit of his Toyota.
While those dust problems are still lingering, Rovanperä pressed on and outpaced Neuville by 6.3s to move into a rally lead of 1.2s.
“That sounds not so bad!” said Rovanperä. “I was still really careful, avoiding all the ruts and I think I found a good feeling in the tricky sections.
“But the dust is a problem in the car, I still can’t breathe very well and we’re not getting much air.”
Neuville, who described the stage as “quite destroyed”, admitted “there’s no way to push on this sort of stage”.
Photo: Hyundai Motorsport
Ott Tänak set the second-fastest time on Chui Lodge 2, 1.2s quicker than team-mate Neuville, despite a stall at the same hairpin that Takamoto Katsuta had stalled at in the morning.
The 2019 world champion is in an increasingly lonely third with a 25s deficit to Neuville and 15.5s in hand over Katsuta who’s already in survival mode.
But Tänak was less than impressed with the issues he was experiencing.
“Every hairpin it’s stalling now,” he said, before staring down the camera and adding: “So what’s happening guys?”
Sébastien Ogier’s damper problem was resolved in service as expected, and his quest to come back up the leaderboard from seventh has begun.
Roadsweeper Ogier was 9.1s quicker than Adrien Fourmaux up in sixth who, in turn, was five seconds quicker than his team-mate Gus Greensmith to lie just 3.5s behind.
Photo: M-Sport World Rally Team
Greensmith had a slight rush out of service as the team changed some settings, but the nature of those changes is thus far unknown.
“The guys have done their best to bodge it,” said Greensmith. “If it fails we’ll have to stop, but let’s see,” he added.
SS5 times
1 Kalle Rovanperä/Jonne Halttunen (Toyota) 9m59.9s
2 Ott Tänak/Martin Järveoja (Hyundai) +5.1s
3 Thierry Neuville/Martijn Wydaeghe (Hyundai) +6.3s
4 Takamoto Katsuta/Daniel Barritt (Toyota) +6.8s
5 Sébastien Ogier/Julien Ingrassia (Toyota) +8.4s
6 Adrien Fourmaux/Renaud Jamoul (M-Sport Ford) +13.4s
Leading positions after SS5
1 Rovanperä/Halttunen 52m53.9s
2 Neuville/Wydaeghe +1.2s
3 Tänak/Järveoja +26.2s
4 Katsuta/Barritt +41.7s
5 Gus Greensmith/Chris Patterson (M-Sport Ford) +1m53.8s
6 Fourmaux/Jamoul +1m57.3s
7 Sébastien Ogier/Julien Ingrassia (Toyota) +2m15.2s
8 Martin Prokop/Zdenek Jurka (Ford) +7m49.4s
9 Onkar Rai/Drew Sturrock (Volkswagen) +7m57.7s
10 Daniel Chwist/Kami Heller (Ford) +10m52.8s
