Ott Tänak leads Safari Rally Kenya halfway through Friday, holding World Rally Championship leader Elfyn Evans to a 24.4-second deficit.
Kalle Rovanperä is third, another 22.7s further back, with reigning world champion Thierry Neuville completing the top four.
Tänak is one of the few drivers yet to hit any strife on this year’s Safari. Leading the way after Thursday’s two stages, Evans took up the chase as his Toyota team-mate Takamoto Katsuta plummeted from second with a rear-right puncture.
But Tänak won both of the morning’s first two stages to eke further ahead of the chasing pack. Rovanperä – who spun in a narrow section and lost over 15s struggling to correct his Toyota – nicked one back on SS5, before Tänak put him in his place with a 3.0s stage win to conclude the morning with a decent lead.
Evans has had a good morning too, although did survive a hot moment early on SS6 when he got his line slightly wrong on a quick left hander, which left him compromised for the approaching right and resulted in his Toyota being kicked wide and into the air.
Neuville meanwhile has had similarly strong pace to his rally-leading team-mate Tänak, but his morning was compromised by a driveshaft and transmission change which took Hyundai 21 minutes during a 15-minute service break.
Leaving service six minutes late copped Neuville a one-minute time penalty – without that, and a 10s jump-start penalty earned on SS5, he’d be just 31.1s off the lead.
Josh McErlean is a handsome fifth for M-Sport – another to be staying out of trouble, unlike his team-mate Grégoire Munster who has shipped minutes with broken rear-right suspension and then a broken driveshaft as a result.
Sami Pajari has also leaked three minutes because he stopped to change a flat tire on the first stage of the day. He’s just outside the points in 11th, with his team-mate Katsuta up in seventh.
Oliver Solberg leads WRC2 and holds sixth place overall, 40.3s up on Kajetan Kajetanowicz – the two Rally2 Yarises split by Katsuta’s Rally1 example on the leaderboard. Kajetanowicz’s main focus however will be Gus Greensmith, who is just 17.4s behind.
Adrien Fourmaux has restarted on Friday following his retirement on the way to Thursday’s second stage due to a master relay failure. He’s over 10 minutes off the lead but avoided any drama on Friday’s first four stages.
