Sebastien Ogier and Vincent Landais closed out the first full day of Rally Japan with a 7.9 second lead after claiming the fastest time on three of the day’s six stages.
“I think we can be pleased tonight, it’s been a good day for us. This morning we had a decent rhythm but there was not much between the top drivers. Then we were able to have a bit more of a push this afternoon when we had a bit more certainty in the pacenotes and the grip conditions for the second pass. It’s nice that we’ve been able to build this small gap: it’s not much, but always better to be in this position. There’s a long way to go but for now it’s been the start that we wanted to the rally,” said the rally leader.
Takamoto Katsuta and Aaron Johnston were in superb form, winning stage three and setting top three times in five stages.
“It’s nice to be at the end of Friday in second place. It has been a bit up and down in terms of the feeling for me: on some stages I was quite happy with the car and in some stages I was struggling for some reason, but we will look into this with the team tonight.
The championship leaders, Elfyn Evans and Scott Martin, took two stage wins to hold third overall, 2.3 seconds behind ‘Taka’ and 10.2 seconds off the lead.
“Seb has pulled the pin out,” the Welshman smiled. “He’s really fast this afternoon, but the rally is long.”
“We had a decent start this morning. There were some changeable conditions like we expected and everything was quite close, but the feeling was OK. Then it wasn’t the best afternoon for us, especially in the opening stage of the loop where we seemed to give away a bit of time in a couple of sections,” Evans added.
After winning the short opening stage on Thursday evening, Kalle Rovanperä and Jonne Halttunen did their championship hopes serious damage after hitting a barrier in Friday’s second stage when he ran wide and damaged his car’s left-rear suspension. He was able to make a fix on the road section that allowed him to reach mid-day service, but more than five minutes were lost, and he ended the day in 17th position overall.
Adrien Fourmaux and Alex Coria were the leading Hyundai crew in fourth place overall, just three-tenths of a second ahead of Sami Pajari and Marko Salminen who did another superb job to hold fifth.
Fourmaux said: “I’m quite pleased with the balance I found this morning, we decided not to change the setup too much and just push which seemed to be the right approach. We overtook Sami, finished in fourth and are not too far away from the podium. The rally is long, but I will keep my head down and focus on driving to the best of my abilities. Now that I’ve got the right balance, we can look into any other setup issues later on.”
Ott Tanak/Martin Jarveoja and Thierry Neuville/Martijn Wydaeghe battled with their car’s handling, ending the day in sixth and seventh respectively. The Belgians faced a damaged rear differential in the morning that compromised their car’s four-wheel drive.
Gregoire Munster and Louis Louka hold eighth in their M-Sport-run Ford Puma. His teammate Josh McErlean and Eoin Treacy rolled out of the event in stage three and will sit out Saturday’s stages.
Oliver Solberg and Alejandro Cachón completed the top ten.
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