Two stages and 14.33km of action on the opening day of the WRC Central European Rally saw Sebastian Ogier and Vincent Landais make the early running in their Toyota Gazoo Racing GR Yaris, 0.9 seconds up on champion-elect Thierry Neuville and Martin Wydaeghe in the leading Shell Mobis Hyundai i20 N.
Neuville needs to outscore his title rival and teammate Ott Tänak/Martin Järveoja by two points to seal his long awaited WRC crown. As things stand, he is doing just that as Tänak is fifth overall…
However, Neuville kissed a hay bale in SS2, wiping out some of his car’s aero bits n bobs on the right front. “I can’t be happy to be honest. I took off the aero in the front right by stupidly touching a straw bale. I didn’t know it but it will handicap me for the whole morning tomorrow. Even here, we touched some, but we have nothing to lose anymore, it is gone already.”
He won the stage, though, by one second…
Andreas Mikkelsen/Torstein Eriksen are 0.8 seconds behind the Belgian crew in third, 0.8 seconds behind, with the returning Takamoto Katsuta/Aaron Johnston 0.3 seconds further back and 0.1 ahead of Tänak.
Adrien Fourmaux/Alex Coria are sixth in the M-Sport Ford Puma, followed by Elfyn Evans, Sami Pajari – having his Rally1 tarmac debut and Grégoire Munster in the second Puma.
Oliver Solberg/Elliot Edmondson lead the WRC2 chase, even though they are not eligible to score points while WRC2 title rival Yohan Rossel/Florian Barral, who must win to keep their championship challenge alive, are 32.5 seconds off Solberg after so nearly rolling his Citroen C3 after hitting a hay bale in SS2. The impact broke a wheel and he is currently in 10th position in WRC2 with a mountain to climb over the next two days.
