Ott Tänak was fastest on shakedown for Rally Poland, leading a Hyundai one-two ahead of Thierry Neuville as Toyota’s trio of World Rally Championship factory drivers failed to crack the top five.
Poland has often been a heartbreaking event for Tänak – he lost a likely maiden WRC win in 2016 with a penultimate stage puncture and crashed out of the lead a year later. The 2019 world champion is planning to make up for past near misses.
“It will not be easy to be on it but we hope we did a good recce, that’s the crucial part here,” said Tänak. “Let’s say it’s a rally I like a lot but I’ve never been able to win it, so it’s a target I’d like to fight for.”
Neuville picked up cosmetic damage on his first run, knocking the rear-right bumper askew on his i20 N Rally1.
“On the Tarmac section, there was just no grip,” he said. “At some point at the exit of the corner the car just went. I thought it would be OK but I hit the bump and it put me a bit straight again.”
Adrien Fourmaux went third-fastest in the lead M-Sport Ford Puma Rally1 Hybrid, 1.8s slower than Tänak’s effort.
A first gravel rally of the season for Andreas Mikkelsen got off to a good start, clocking a time 2.3s slower than Tänak to go fourth fastest in the third Hyundai.
Despite running without a hybrid system on his Puma, Mārtiņš Sesks was an impressive fifth quickest at shakedown; like Mikkelsen, he took the opportunity to conduct four passes of the 3.2-mile Lubiewo test.
Kalle Rovanperä and Jonne Halttunen spent 14 hours conducting recce in one day – Halttunen only got four and a half hours of sleep on Wednesday night
Elfyn Evans led Toyota’s trio of GR Yaris Rally1s in sixth, seventh and eighth place. Kalle Rovanperä, a late stand-in for Sébastien Ogier after the eight-time world champion’s recce accident on Tuesday, braked too late for a chicane and hit a hay bale but continued on his way – which he suggested was caused by his last-minute recce.
“Our testing is this five kilometers we did now,” said Rovanperä. “Yesterday we did 14 hours of recceing of the stages, no videos at all. It’s not so easy.
“Here I hit some bales on the junction because when we went through the recce in the evening, it was full of fans already so I had no idea how the bales would be.”
Katsuta was the slowest of the Toyota drivers, 3.8s behind Tänak’s benchmark, while Grégoire Munster propped up the rear of the Rally1 field with a 2m17.2s, 0.9s behind Katsuta.
Shakedown was interrupted for 30 minutes after the first pass of Rally1 cars due to issues related to spectator control.
Rally Poland kicks off properly with the opening stage on Thursday evening, taking place at the Mikołajki Arena and starting at 7:05pm local time.
