Hyundai’s Dani Sordo has lost crucial ground to world championship leader Sébastien Ogier in their battle for second place on the first Rally Italy stage of Saturday.
Sordo held a 16.8-second advantage over Ogier after eight stages on Friday, but the two-time winner in Sardinia dropped 9.3s to Ogier’s Toyota to have his gap slashed to just 7.5s.
Ogier wasn’t too convinced by his run, feeling his choice of four hard and two soft tires was “not the best for that stage but maybe will work for later”.
However Sordo’s car began to slow as he crashed through a watersplash towards the end of the stage, the main culprit for his time loss.
“I don’t know [how it happened],” Sordo explained. “The engine stalled after that and I lost a lot of time there.
“Maybe some water come in but at the end it’s working OK, so in the end we have luck.”
Photo: Toyota Gazoo Racing
Elfyn Evans has repelled the advances of Hyundai rival Thierry Neuville on Saturday morning, comprehensively beating Neuville to strengthen his hold on fourth place overall.
Evans cut a perplexed figure on Friday as he struggled to find the optimum feeling in his Toyota Yaris WRC, languishing in the lower end of the overall leaderboard and the stage timesheets.
But he turned a corner on Saturday morning’s opening test, outpacing Neuville by 6.9s to create an overall buffer of 8.1s over the fifth-placed driver.
“I wasn’t sure if it was perfect to be honest, a few places weren’t fully on the button, but it was a generally committed run. I’m happier with that than yesterday of course,” said Evans.
Neuville felt he “had a good stage” but there were some sections where he “couldn’t really push” on the gravel.
“It’s quite rough in some sections and I couldn’t really push through in some places, so we’re going to try and adapt that for the next stage which is going to be tough as well,” he said.
Evans couldn’t manage the fastest time though, with that honor going to rally leader Ott Tänak.
Tänak edged Evans by 2.6s and because of Sordo’s dramas, now enjoys an even healthier lead of 34.6s.
“Conditions were nice and grip actually quite high so so far, so good,” he said.
Following his first-stage accident on Friday, Teemu Suninen returned to competition as the first car onto the road and was second-slowest of the World Rally Cars, quicker only than Pierre-Louis Loubet who returned to full speed following brake problems across Friday.
Asked how he feels about his crash yesterday, Suninen said: “Bad, really bad but now I just have to get used to the car, enjoy and get back the good rhythm.”
Suninen was however some 11.8s slower than Kalle Rovanperä who also returned following his suspension failure on Friday; a misfortune that cost the Toyota driver second place.
Photo: Toyota Gazoo Racing
Coiluna – Loelle was however the stage which Rovanperä crashed on eight months ago, so he was happy to make it to the end with the sixth-fastest time to boot.
“It was nice to be back on the stage and finish it this time,” he said. “So for sure it went better than last year.”
Sixth-placed Takamoto Katsuta felt “pretty good in the car” but could only go seventh-fastest on SS9, albeit just 0.6s behind team-mate Rovanperä’s pace.
Gus Greensmith was the third and final WRC car to restart this morning following his transmission problem on yesterday’s final test. Greensmith set a time four seconds adrift of Rovanperä’s run.
“We made some changes from yesterday and the car feels better again, but I was making some mistakes so if I smooth it out it should be better,” he said.
Yohan Rossel continues to lead WRC3 in ninth overall, while Pepe López has been passed by his fellow Spaniard Jan Solans by 0.7s after Solans comfortably took the stage win in class.
Photo: Jaanus Ree / Red Bull Content Pool
SS9 times
1 Ott Tänak/Martin Järveoja (Hyundai) 8m48.1s
2 Elfyn Evans/Scott Martin (Toyota) +2.6s
3 Sébastien Ogier/Julien Ingrassia (Toyota) +6.1s
4 Thierry Neuville/Martijn Wydaeghe (Hyundai) +9.5s
5 Dani Sordo/Borja Rozada (Hyundai) +15.4s
6 Kalle Rovanperä/Jonne Halttunen (Toyota) +16.2s
Leading positions after SS9
1 Tänak/Järveoja (Hyundai) 1h35m46.1s
2 Sordo/Rozada (Hyundai) +34.8s
3 Ogier/Ingrassia (Toyota) +42.3s
4 Evans/Martin (Toyota) +1m04.6s
5 Neuville/Wydaeghe (Hyundai) +1m12.7s
6 Takamoto Katsuta/Daniel Barritt (Toyota) +1m42.9s
7 Mads Østberg/Torstein Eriksen (Citroën) +4m18.8s
8 Jari Huttunen/Mikko Lukka (Hyundai) +4m49.8s
9 Yohan Rossel/Alexandre Coria (Citroën) +5m20.0s
10 Jan Solans/Rodrigo Sanjuan (Citroën) +5m41.1s
