Ott Tänak won the first World Rally Championship stage to be held in Belgium, to lead an early Hyundai 1-2-3 over Thierry Neuville on the Ypres Rally.
Ypres has joined the WRC calendar for the first time this year, and all the pre-event talk pointed to Hyundai being favorite as only Neuville and Craig Breen of the World Rally Car contingent had competed on this rally before.
But it was the third Hyundai i20 of Tänak that set the pace on the opening Reninge – Vleteren stage, edging Neuville’s i20 Coupe WRC by 2.3 seconds and Breen by another 0.2s.
“We had a very clean run,” said Tänak. “There is a lot of dirt coming in the road, some places more than I expected but car is behaving nice. The run was quite smooth.”
Local hero Neuville had looked to have set an impressive time, beating the Toyotas of Sébastien Ogier and Elfyn Evans by over four seconds, before Tänak set his stunning benchmark.
“I wanted to do a first clean stage without any mistakes and we got cleanly through,” said Neuville. “I had a good feeling and we felt comfortable.”
Third-placed Breen was lucky to drop just 2.5s to the rally leader. Having collected a puncture on the shakedown stage earlier on Friday morning, Breen “was sure” he had another on SS1.
“Honestly speaking I had a huge bang on a concrete lip,” he revealed, “[and I] dropped the rhythm for two or three kilometers. I was sure I had a puncture.”
Photo: Jaanus Ree/Red Bull Content Pool
The aforementioned Toyotas of Evans and Ogier are currently fourth and sixth overall respectively, split by their team-mate and recent WRC winner Kalle Rovanperä.
Evans, who felt his stage wasn’t “the cleanest”, trailed Tänak by 6.4s but ended up 0.4s faster than Rovanperä and 1.5s up on Ogier.
Rovanperä also found the going “really difficult”.
“You have to trust the pacenotes so much and it’s really difficult to remember the stages when you come first time,” he said.
Toyota junior driver Takamoto Katsuta, competing with Keaton Williams for the first time this weekend, took an early seventh overall as he looks to build his experience on terrain that is unfamiliar to him.
“I really need to step-by-step get the feeling and the experience otherwise it’s easy to go off,” he said.
“To see the time can be frustrating because one mistake makes a big difference, but [we] try to enjoy.”
Photo: M-Sport
Katsuta was quicker than both of the M-Sport Fords, however, who suffered as the eighth and ninth cars onto the stage.
Adrien Fourmaux (pictured above) ended up the faster of the two in eighth overall, 2.4s up on his team-mate Gus Greensmith.
“It’s really, really nice to drive, I’m enjoying but the road is already really dirty for us it’s really difficult,” Fourmaux explained.
“I overshot twice so the time will be not good.”
Pierre-Louis Loubet “made a small mistake at the first junction” but rounded out the early top 10, 4.2s down on Greensmith and 20.1s shy of the leader.
SS1 times
1 Ott Tänak/Martin Järveoja (Hyundai) 7m49.1s
2 Thierry Neuville/Martijn Wydaeghe (Hyundai) +2.3s
3 Craig Breen/Paul Nagle (Hyundai) +2.5s
4 Elfyn Evans/Scott Martin (Toyota) +6.4s
5 Kalle Rovanperä/Jonne Halttunen (Toyota) +6.8s
6 Sébastien Ogier/Julien Ingrassia (Toyota) +7.9s
7 Takamoto Katsuta/Keaton Williams (Toyota) +11.2s
8 Adrien Fourmaux/Renaud Jamoul (M-Sport Ford) +13.5s
9 Gus Greensmith/Chris Patterson (M-Sport Ford) +15.9s
10 Pierre-Louis Loubet/Florian Haut-Labourdette (2C Competition Hyundai) +20.1s
