Elfyn Evans holds a handsome lead of over a minute at Safari Rally Kenya after Saturday morning, helped by two punctures for Toyota team-mate Kalle Rovanperä.
World Rally Championship leader Evans started the rally’s third leg 7.7s ahead of Rovanperä but immediately doubled that on the day-opening Sleeping Warrior stage – despite a flat tire towards the end.
Evans was looking quicker than Rovanperä again on the early splits of the Elmenteita stage but ended up destroying him by over 20s as the Finn picked up a front-right puncture and struggled to the end of the test.
That widened the gap between the two Toyotas to 37s, but Rovanperä looked to be responding to Evans on the early splits of Soysambu.
However yet another puncture, this time on the front-left, for Rovanperä meant he lost a minute; now trailing Evans by 1m32.5s with just 17s in hand over Hyundai’s Ott Tänak.
“We had a road full of zebras on a fast section and we hit some stones because we had to avoid the zebras,” Rovanperä told DirtFish.
Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville meanwhile lost ground, and position, to the Toyota of Takamoto Katsuta. Stopping to change a front-left puncture on SS11 allowed Katsuta to pass, but the Japanese smashed the reigning world champion by 42.8s on the next stage to cement his fourth place.
After SS13, the two are split by 1m29.4s on the leaderboard as Katsuta won the test, with sixth-placed Sami Pajari 1m49.3s adrift of Neuville – who is suffering from a lack of sleep after feeling unwell.
Jan Solans holds seventh place and the lead of WRC2 in his Toyota; a lead earned thanks to Kajetan Kajetanowicz stopped with broken suspension on the day’s opening stage and lost over 45 minutes.
Gus Greensmith initially took the lead but a puncture on his Škoda on the first two stages opened the door for Jan Solans who moved ahead by 12s.
Behind the top two in WRC2, Grégoire Munster is the leading M-Sport Ford driver in ninth overall, beset on Saturday by two punctures – one at the end of SS11, and another which he had to stop and change during SS12.
Team-mate Josh McErlean had been ahead in seventh overall but broke a steering arm on Sleeping Warrior (SS11) and lost 29 minutes as he and co-driver Eoin Treacy stopped to replace it.
Adrien Fourmaux was due to tackle Saturday’s stages as first car on the road, but his Hyundai team elected to withdraw him for the day and spare the car for Super Sunday instead.
