After the opening super special stage in Jeddah on Wednesday evening, won by Ott Tanak in his final WRC event, the first full day of WRC Saudi Arabia was about road position and tyres.
The opening gravel stage was relatively smooth and the one where Sebastien Ogier pounced, beating Elfyn Evans’ time by a massive 12.8 seconds as his opening salvo in the title chase and placing the championship leader under immediate pressure.
Martins Sesks made the most of his favorable road position to win the first two stages of the day in his M-Sport Ford Puma and take the rally lead which held up to stage five when he suffered a puncture in stage six, relinquishing the top spot to Toyota’s young gun Sami Pajari.
Pajari’s lead was short-lived as he too suffered tyre issues in stage seven, leaving Adrien Fourmaux and Hyundai as the new rally leader.
With Evans already on the back foot in the title chase, as things stood at the end of stage six, he would still beat Ogier to the title by a single point. After the final gravel stage of the day, Kalle Rovanperä passed Evans for eighth, handing the ‘as it stands’ title to Ogier by one point.
The three GR Yaris crews were seventh, eighth and ninth overall, having opened the road and suffered the worst of the road cleaning with Rovanperä shedding a few seconds after a late-stage puncture in stage four.
Behind Fourmaux, Pajari and Sesks, Tanak won SS7 to cement his fourth position, 1.1 seconds ahead of his Hyundai teammate and outgoing World Champion Thierry Neuville in fifth after the Belgian had a deflated tyre in stage three.
Takamoto Katsuta held a strong sixth after a solid day in the stages, building his cushion over Ogier in seventh. Rounding out the top ten was Gregoire Munster who was slow and looked out of his depth.
Josh McErlean parked his Puma in a rut as early as stage two which pulled the tyre off its bead; Nasser Al-Attiyah incurred a ten second penalty for a jumped start in stage one but his day got worse when he lost the rear hatch following a hard landing after a big jump in stage five. The rather large hole in his Puma pulled choking dust into the cabin but he wasn’t done as he had a puncture in stage six, which cost the Qatari five minutes as he battled a malfunctioning jack.
Oliver Solberg led the way in WRC2 but of the points scorers, it was Gus Greensmith in his Skoda that held sway over Kajetan Kajetanowicz after Nikolay Gryazin suffered a puncture in stage two.
Thursday’s action concludes with another run over the Jeddah Super Special later this evening.
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