Ott Tänak won the Central European Rally’s opening stage, the Prague-based Velká Chuchle superspecial, to take the lead of the World Rally Championship’s newest event.
The M-Sport driver, on the back of winning Rally Chile, made the most of running soft tires all round on his Ford Puma Rally1 to record a time 0.7 seconds faster than Toyota’s Sébastien Ogier through the 1.6-mile mixed-surface stage based around a trotting track in front of a large crowd.
Championship contenders Kalle Rovanperä and Elfyn Evans were nearly 4s off the pace, ninth and 10th fastest through the stage as all four Toyotas ran on wet-weather rubber in the dry conditions, presumably anticipating some precipitation ahead of the day’s second stage.
“Superspecial stages, I guess it can’t be much different so they [tire choices] are quite mixed,” Tänak reflected.
Eight-time world champion Ogier, returning to the Toyota fold for the first time since the Acropolis Rally in early September, was 0.3s faster than Thierry Neuville’s Hyundai i20 N, which ran on one soft tire and three wet.
Neuville’s run through the test was quite spectacular, including clipping a bail through a chicane.
“We had a good stage,” Neuville reported, adding on his approach to the rally: “We are going to go for it. We know that on Tarmac usually we are fast. If I feel good in the car I will go for it.”
Neuville’s team-mates Esapekka Lappi and Teemu Suninen were fourth and fifth fastest through the stage. Lappi was 1.6s slower than Tänak but was penalized an additional 10s for a jumped start, leaving him last of the Rally1 drivers in the early classification.
Suninen therefore inherited fourth overall, some 2.4s behind than Tänak but 0.4s ahead of the Estonian’s team-mate Grégoire Munster in fifth.
Takamoto Katsuta was the second fastest Toyota and lies sixth overall, 3.4s behind Tänak.
Seventh overall is WRC2 leader Andreas Mikkelsen, who went faster than three Rally1 cars through the stage, just 0.4s behind Katsuta.
Katsuta was faster than both Rovanperä and Evans who, other than local WRC2 driver Erik Cais, were the first to go through the stage. The pair appeared to be perturbed by a late change to the running order.
“It doesn’t mean so much just at the moment,” said Evans who was 0.1s faster than his title rival. “It was all a bit of a panic before the start.”
Rovanperä said: “It was not the best start. We were in the regroup but then the timing changed and we had a few minutes time to get ready. So not the best relaxed stage, but anyway the stage went fine.”
Pierre-Louis Loubet, on his final appearance of the season, was slowest of the Rally1 drivers. His Puma lies 13th overall, behind four Rally2 cars and 4.4s down on team-mate Tänak.
Crews will now head to the 5.5-mile Klatovy stage before returning to Germany for their overnight halt.
