Elfyn Evans dominates the Welsh stages to lead Rally GB

M-Sport/DMACK rally star Elfyn Evans carried on after lunch where he had left off earlier and spent Friday afternoon consolidating his Rally GB lead to end Day 2 with a commanding 25 second advantage over team-mates Ott Tänak and Sébastien Ogier who had spent the afternoon quibbling over second place.

Evans got started from the very first stage of the afternoon loop by winning SS5 Myherin and going 4.3s quicker than anyone else. But team-mat Ogier and Hyundai number one driver Thierry Neuville both reacted, each taking a win on the following two stages.

Despite losing out on more stage wins, Evans was second on both, each by less than a second, allowing him to still increase his lead over the duelling Tänak and Ogier to 24.6s at the end of the day.

Initially, Tänak had looked like the man to beat in the morning three stage loop but he lost out in the afternoon, with Oggi beating him on all three stages and will start on Saturday morning just a slender 2.2s ahead of his M-Sport team-mate and the reigning World Rally Champion.

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Oggi’s Stage 6 Sweet Lamb win was his first since Thursday evening's SuperSpecial. Coupling the win with his stronger afternoon performance, he certainly looks the most likely challenger on Saturday to take Evens on in his home habitat. With M-Sport cars currently occupying a 1-2-3 in the order, could team orders come into play on Saturday afternoon from M-Sport boss Malcolm Wilson to preserve the podium lockout?

Neuville's Stage 7 stage win was the first non-Ford win in the rally took the Belgian Hyundai team leader into fourth place, albeit a full 10-sec behind the battle for second and nearly 40-sec off the lead! Those 10-sec may prove costly come Sunday afternoon which were largely due to a 10-sec overnight penalty picked up by the Belgian.

As for the rest, Jari-Matti Latvala and Kris Meeke both had miserable afternoons, dropping two places in the standings and now sit fifth and sixth, separated by just 0.1s, both being less than 5s behind Neuville.

Neuville’s new teammate Andreas Mikkelsen is next up, all alone in seventh, 10s behind JML and Meeke but almost 22s ahead of Hyundai number two Dani Sordo in eighth who in turn is 9-sec ahead of team-mate Haydon Paddon. Up next is the Yaris of Juha Hänninen in tenth, 20-sec behind Paddon and 6-sec ahead of teammate Esapekka Lappi in 11th.

The only casualty of the day was Citroën’s Craig Breen who came to a halt on the last stage of the day with team-mate Meeke reporting his C3 WRC off the road in a ditch. The Irishman having previously lost time on the first run through Hafren with a slow puncture.

WRC Wales Rally GB: Top 10 After SS7