The longest day of WRC Rally Chile started with rainy and muddy conditions in the morning which dried out over the afternoon loop.
Sebastien Ogier and Vincent Landais ended Saturday’s run of six stages with a lead of 6.3 seconds over his Toyota Gazoo Racing teammates Elfyn Evans and Scott Martin with Adrien Fourmaux and Alex Coria holding on to third overall.
The leading Hyundai driver started the day well, growing his overnight lead to 2.5 seconds after the opening stage. Evans reveled in the conditions which resembled Rally GB and closed up to 0.9 seconds before storming into the lead on stage nine, the final run before the teams returned to the service park.
While Fourmaux struggled through the longest stage of the rally at just over 28km in length, Ogier upped the ante and pushed the Frenchman down into third position overall although Fourmaux managed to bump Thierry Neuville down to fourth as the defending World Champion struggled with his Hyundai’s handling in the tricky conditions.
When battle resumed after lunch, Ogier, on dry roads, took a 2.9 second bite out of Evans’ lead and despite the Welshman’s best efforts, lost the lead to the eight-time World Champion on stage eleven. On the final stage, Ogier claimed his third fastest time of the afternoon loop to head home with a cushion of 6.3 seconds.
The afternoon saw both Fourmaux and Neuville fall further and further away from the rally lead, ending a frustrating afternoon 26.8 and 41.7 seconds respectively behind the leading GR Yaris.
Sami Pajari and Marko Salminen held a steady fifth, brilliantly withstanding the pressure from Kalle Rovanperä who was hunting him down, ending the day almost 33 seconds ahead of the #69 Toyota.
Gregoire Munster and Louis Louka had a solid afternoon, even beating Rovanperä’s time in stage 12. It was not enough to hold of a hard charging Takamoto Katsuta though, who moved into seventh place at the end of the day’s action.
The first casualty of the day was Chilean driver Alberto Heller who stopped just 800m into the first stage, while Josh McErlean made it to the 3.1km mark before his Puma also ground to a halt with a failed fuel pump.
Ott Tanak re-started the rally with a fresh engine in his i20 N and blitzed the first two stages and was on his way to the third stage before turning around and going back to the service park. Lying in 18th place, there was little point in thrashing his car around Chile and elected to save it for Super Sunday.
Matters were calm in WRC2. Oliver Solberg won four of the six stages, with the returning Rossel and Nikolay Gryazin each taking a stage win. The young Swede will win the WRC2 Championship if he wins Rally Chile and goes to bed with 30.2 seconds in hand over Gryazin.
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