Dani Sordo has retired from Rally Japan on Friday’s opening Isegami’s Tunnel test as his Hyundai caught fire, while overnight leader Sébastien Ogier dropped close to three minutes with a puncture.
Sordo hadn’t expected to be competing in Japan but earned the chance to compete when Oliver Solberg was dropped by the time.
He was an early ninth after SS1 on Thursday but any thoughts about performance quickly became irrelevant as his i20 N Rally1 suddenly caught ablaze on SS2.
Sordo let out a yelp and told his co-driver Cándido Carrera something was burning, but by then the pair – and Gus Greensmith and Jonas Andersson behind them – were powerless to stop the car going up in flames.
SS1 was canceled for the remaining crews as a result of the car burning out.
Meanwhile Ogier – who’s competing with co-driver Vincent Landais for the first time – and who had won Thursday night’s opener by just 0.1 seconds from M-Sport’s Craig Breen, was overhauled by Breen not just on the leaderboard but also physically on the stage on SS2.
A puncture rendered Ogier to believe his “race was already over” as he lost 2m43.9s to stage winner Kalle Rovanperä who’s taken the lead.
Rovanperä’s time may have been good but his feeling on the stage was not. He described it as “quite s***”.
“I have a lot of understeer and on this kind of road you kill the front tires and you cannot drive,” he said.
“Then halfway through there was a lot of smoke inside the car, I don’t know what it is but it’s not so nice to drive.”
The smoke was evident from the onboard camera as Rovanperä negotiated the end of the stage. But a haze also hampered his rivals, and in the already famous tunnel that gives SS2 its name, dust lingered at the end which gave first on the road Rovanperä a clear advantage.
His pace compared to Toyota team-mate Elfyn Evans made that point clear. Evans was 0.8s up on Rovanperä prior to the tunnel section, but then immediately dropped to 6.8s back at the next split.
He eventually finished the stage 5.5s slower than the world champion. Evans, who was third fastest to lie third overall, wasn’t giving much away though.
“Probably not the best rhythm to be honest, but OK it’s like that,” he said. “The car’s OK, I’m just finding that feet.”
Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville ran Rovanperä closest on the stage, dropping just 1.8s to his rival. But hiss stage-end soundbite was remarkably similar.
“It didn’t feel great to be honest,” Neuville said. “I was understeering quite a lot and towards the end my pacenotes were too conservative so I couldn’t keep the flow.
“Plenty of surprises and it was getting quite dirty as well so yeah… it’s all we could do.”
Ott Tänak is fourth overall, 9.3s off the lead and 2.2s up on Craig Breen who reckoned he lost four or five seconds caught behind Ogier.
On a stage named after a haunted tunnel, Takamoto Katsuta got scared – but not because he’s afraid of ghosts.
“Very difficult and really bad driving,” the home hero described.
“I mean the driving is very bad. Once I was quite surprised how there was no grip and after that I was not fully sure what is coming.”
Katsuta’s an early sixth, 14.7s off the lead.
