Toyota dominated the shakedown test for Rally Spain courtesy of a divergent tire strategy, with M-Sport’s Pierre-Louis Loubet the only thing stopping a GR Yaris Rally1 top-four lockout.
A section of the famous Riudecanyes test, which will host the rally-ending powerstage on Sunday, started off damp then got even wetter when rain began to fall, playing into the hands of the four GR Yaris Rally1s that had taken soft rubber.
Hyundai and M-Sport crews had taken a full set of hard compound tires, by comparison, a potentially important decision as four tires from shakedown can be carried over to a driver’s allocation for the rally proper.
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While that gives Toyota’s rivals an extra set of the more durable rubber for warmer conditions later in the rally, it made the shakedown tricky to traverse, especially for those drivers who got the worst of the rain.
“I feel stupid doing this stage with hard tires,” said Hyundai’s Dani Sordo after his first pass, who could only muster the 13th-fastest time.
“It’s not nice to start like this; I made some mistakes but it’s impossible to drive like this. We need to be a little bit more focused with the tyres.”
The same could not be said for Sébastien Ogier, who clocked the fastest time by 0.9 seconds from Takamoto Katsuta behind. He’d also started as the pacesetter, only briefly losing the top spot when Elfyn Evans had popped up with the fastest second run.
He clocked his best time of 2m40.1s late on in the shakedown session as conditions finally began to improve, though the eight-time world champion was more concerned about what lay ahead on Friday given his late starting position.
“It won’t be easy for us tomorrow; all the new stages have a lot of cuts so it might be tricky after a few cars but we have nothing to lose this weekend,” Ogier said. “We have to try.”
M-Sport sent all its drivers out after Toyota for their final passes bar Craig Breen and, with road conditions improving after the rain shower abated, they closed the gap on the Toyotas.
Pierre-Louis Loubet had barely been hanging onto a top 20 place on the scoreboard after doing his first three runs in quick succession when conditions were at their worst.
But Loubet then came back out towards the end for two more optional runs; he initially rose to fifth as the best hard-shod runner, then got in among the Toyotas by going only 1.2s off Ogier’s pace.
Newly crowned world champion Kalle Rovanperä did enough on his final pass of shakedown to pip Evans by 0.1s for fourth.
Evans was the last of the Toyotas to attempt his third run but ended up four seconds off the pace, meaning his second run ended up being his fastest and only enough for fifth.
Gus Greensmith, who lamented that “it seems to rain a lot this year,” wasn’t far behind the lead Toyotas despite being on the ‘wrong’ tire for the conditions, going 3.8s slower than Ogier’s benchmark to go sixth – which he then improved to 2.5s with a fourth run.
Seventh went to the returning Adrien Forumaux, who missed the last two rallies after being benched by M-Sport.
Fourmaux’s first run had been very slow as he’d hit the worst of the earlier rain shower on his first pass, so he opted to do some extra donuts at the final-turn roundabout to entertain the fans.
“Instead of having a bad stage I prefer to give some fun to the spectators,” said Forumaux, while also confirming he had “decided to take these [hard] tires for the rally.”
Breen ensured that the Hyundai trio would be relegated to the bottom of the Rally1 timesheets with his second-pass effort of 2m50.4s. But having wrapped up his running early after his mandatory passes, Breen was usurped for eighth by Pepe López, the leading WRC2 contender, in a Hyundai i20 N Rally2.
Hyundai’s approach to shakedown appeared to be geared towards getting the mandatory three passes out of the way as quickly as possible. All its drivers got their runs in promptly then headed back to service, electing not to attempt fourth runs when conditions had improved.
That allowed Alejandro Cachón, who is on a hot streak in the Spanish Superchampionship with back-to-back wins at national level, to go 10th overall in his Citroën C3, adding a second support-class car in between Hyundai and its Rally1 rivals.
Ott Tänak ended as the lead Rally1-spec Hyundai, 12.8s slower than Ogier. M-Sport’s works Rally2 runner Jari Huttunen slotted in ahead of Tänak’s team-mates Sordo and Thierry Neuville, who separated themselves by only a tenth.
