Oliver Solberg started Friday with a 33.3 second lead over Elfyn Evans and over a minute ahrad of Sebastien Ogier but after six dry stages, the Swede’s lead was down to a single second over Ogier with Evans bumped down to third with Toyota Gazoo Racing filling the top four spots on the overall leaderboard.
The nine-time WRC champion spent the day on a Safari hunt, sharing the day’s stage wins with Sami Pajari as they raced across the African plains.
The day’s first scheduled stage, a re-run of Thursday’s first stage was deemed undriveable and canceled. The opening stage on Friday saw Solberg out brake himself, dropping 16.5 seconds to Ogier’s stage winning time.
Stages five and six passed without any major incidents as the crews headed for the midday service with Ogier under ten seconds behind Evans.
The first stage after the midday service saw Ogier pass Evans for second place by 0.9 seconds and set his sights firmly on Solberg. The Swede dropped 25.6 seconds in stage eight with a puncture and saw his lead shrink to one second.
Ogier piled on the pressure, cutting Solberg’s lead to 0.7 seconds on the penultimate stage of the day before Solberg edged it back out to one second on the final stage.
“It has been a good day. It is actually better to not be in the lead tonight because we know on Saturday it always starts raining in the afternoon and most of the time the rear guys suffer the most. Tomorrow is a big day and it will be a massive challenge to survive that one,” Ogier said back at the Naivasha service.
Evans hung on to third overall, 20.5 seconds off the overall lead having swept the roads clean for his rivals as the anticipated rain stayed away.
“I think getting through without issue was quite important. Obviously tomorrow all hell is going to brake loose. We are in an ok position for now but obviously a long way to go. If past years are to go by a bit of everything [can happen tomorrow]. You are never ready for that,” Evans remarked.
Pajari won four of the day’s seven stages and lies fourth overall with Thierry Neuville and Adrien Fourmaux holding fifth and sixth positions for Hyundai, the two Korean cars separated by 1.2 seconds.
Neuville had a tyre pressure alert and finished stage five with a de-beaded tyre as well as a water pressure alert on stage nine but completed the day safely.
Takamoto Katsuta had a disastrous day tumbling down the order from fourth to seventh after suffering a double puncture on stage seven, leaving the frustrated Japanese driver to back off to avoid retirement as he ran out of rubber.
Esapekka Lappi held eighth place after an uninspiring drive which included encountering a herd of giraffe in the road. Robert Virves and Gus Greensmith rounded out the top ten. Greensmith conceded the WRC2 lead following a puncture in stage six and ended the day nursing a gearbox issue.
It was a calamitous day for M-Sport Ford as Josh McErlean was forced to retire in stage seven and Jon Armstrong had a puncture in stage eight but pulled over in stage nine with a broken driveshaft. The crew removed the offending part and completed the stage, losing 38 minutes, and completed the day in two-wheel drive.
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