Rovanperä’s clean sweep as Toyota hold 1-2-3-4-5

The two-time champion won all six stages of Friday in Canaries, as the Toyotas dominated

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Kalle Rovanperä has strengthened his grip on the lead of Rally Islas Canarias, spearheading a Toyota domination of the leaderboard as Hyundai continued to struggle for pace.

A dominant showing from the two-time world champion led to six stage wins out of six on the opening day of the World Rally Championship’s first pure asphalt event, which also marked the debut of the hard compound Hankook tire.

Of all the drivers Rovanperä appeared to adapt best, building a 26.8s lead over team-mate Sébastien Ogier across the first day of action.

Such was Rovanperä’s dominance that he used the final stage of the day to start experimenting with his setup, as he looked ahead to the next day’s stages.

Ogier is rarely a driver to admit defeat – but he seemed to suggest he had no answer to Rovanperä’s blistering pace.

“We improved the car a little bit, the balance felt better, but Kalle has been impressive today,” said Ogier. “For me, I think the fight is only with Elfyn [Evans] now.”

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Ogier could not find an answer for Rovanperä's pace no matter what he tried

Championship leader Evans cut a frustrated figure on the Friday afternoon loop, having fallen out of the comfort zone with his GR Yaris Rally1 as he began to struggle with understeer.

“The feeling is still not amazing, I’ll be honest,” said Evans. “It’s hard to be right everywhere and it’s frustrating to be like that. But there we are.”

Of the points-scoring Toyotas in the main team Evans was the slowest, falling to 9.6s behind Ogier in the battle for second.

Sami Pajari moved into fourth on the second run of Valsequillo and looks comfortable, with 10.7s in hand over senior team-mate Takamoto Katsuta.

“You need to be tidy and if you push more you kill the tires, so we’re just trying to manage it,” said Pajari. “You need to be quite quick to do these times but I would not consider this pushing.”

While all was well in the Toyota camp, Hyundai was staring down the barrel of another loop of its drivers trying to wrestle a trio of recalcitrant i20s into action.

Days like this are really hard to swallow but in the end, they are not the end of the world Thierry Neuville

Thierry Neuville’s pace improved somewhat on the Friday afternoon loop, though simultaneously Adrien Fourmaux’s chances took a nosedive, as he sank down the leaderboard on the afternoon pass.

Fourmaux had been clinging onto fourth place at midday service but was immediately usurped by Sami Pajari, then sank all the way to eighth place behind his two senior Hyundai team-mates on the day’s final stage.

“We are just slow,” said a dejected Fourmaux at the end of the Valleseco test. “We are running out of ideas actually. I am enjoying driving, the stages are beautiful, Canaria is beautiful, but just frustrated with the time.”

Neuville now spearheads the Hyundai effort in sixth, 1m13.3s from the lead but only 7.3s behind Katsuta, with Tänak 0.8s behind the reigning world champion and Fourmaux a further 0.7s in arrears.

“Days like this are really hard to swallow but in the end, they are not the end of the world,” said Neuville. “I’m not sure we learned anything today but week now we have two more days to go and we have to stay positive and continue working.

“The balance isn’t there and we have no grip, so it’s very frustrating.”

M-Sport’s drivers weren’t feeling any more upbeat than their rivals across the service park.

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Munster and McErlean have been on a shared mission to find a setup that works for M-Sport

Grégoire Munster rued changing his setup at midday service as it made the car “worse” – the grand irony being that team-mate Josh McErlean had gone in the opposite direction to Munster on setup and ended up feeling the same.

“We went two different ways and mine seems like the wrong direction too, so I dunno,” shrugged McErlean at the end of the second pass of Valsequillo.

But the M-Sport duo continued to work together as they sought more performance out of the Ford Puma Rally1; Munster ended the day in ninth place, 56.3s slower than Fourmaux, while McErlean was a further 1m05.1s back in 11th.

“We are trying, not giving up, trying to find a solution with both crews, trying to help each other out,” said Munster.

“It’s tough; we have two cars entered and the others have five and pre-event rallies and so on, so they get a lot of extra information. For sure it’s playing a role, you can see it in the times with Toyota having five cars out front.”

Yohan Rossel

Yohan Rossel mirrored Rovanperä's stage-winning run in the WRC2 category

Yohan Rossel continued his domination of the WRC2 category; like Rovanperä, he also took a clean sweep of stage wins on the opening day, opening out an 18.7s-lead over Spanish superchampion Alejandro Cachón’s Toyota GR Yaris Rally2.

Rossel’s Citroën team-mate and younger brother Léo Rossel had been in the podium fight after midday service but a stuck throttle caused a big moment on the second pass of Valsequillo, demoting him to sixth place. That became fifth on the day’s final stage after usurping 2022 European champion Efrén Llarena.

Nikolay Gryazin inherited third after the younger Rossel’s misfortune but is under pressure from fellow Škoda Fabia RS driver Emil Lindhom, as the 2022 WRC2 champion passed Llarena for fourth and trimmed the gap from 4.2s to 3.1s.

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