Sami Pajari and Marko Salminen inherited the lead of WRC Rally Croatia after their teammates and championship leaders Elfyn Evans and Scott Martin crashed out of the rally lead in stage three.
Thierry Neuville holds second overall, 13.7 seconds off the lead with Takamoto Katsuta in third, just nine tenths of a second behind the Belgian pair.
Hayden Paddon and John Kennard, enjoying their second outing in the third Hyundai, held fourth from Adrien Fourmaux and Alexandre Coria, clawing their way back after losing a minute and a half due to a puncture in SS2.
Josh McErlean and Eoin Treacy are sixth overall in the sole remaining M-Sport Ford Puma but suffered a puncture in stage seven.
The first casualty of the rally was Oliver Solberg and Elliot Edmondson, second in the championship standings, who crashed out on the first stage this morning.
Evans won the opening two stages to build an immediate lead of 15.8 seconds before disaster struck.
The Welshman was caught out and arrived way too fast for a corner and braked way too late. The GR Yaris headed deep into the Croatian countryside and their day was done.
“We’ve been caught out basically. The corner was a bit tighter than expected and we were way too fast and we went off into the trees, unfortunately. It is very disappointing. Obviously, it was a strong start, and things were going well, but yeah, didn’t end so well”, Evans related back in the Automotodrom Grobnik service park.
“Unfortunately, it was super steep where the car stopped. The car would have gone, but there was no way to get it back unfortunately.”
Pajari is chasing his maiden victory and handled the intense pressure from a hard charging, on-form Thierry Neuville and Martijn Wydaeghe in the leading Hyundai i20 N after the Finn’s lead dropped to 2.7 seconds at one point.
The two rally leaders won three stages each; Neuville took the scratch time on stages three, six and seven while Pajari was fastest on stages four, five and eight.
The top three are covered by 14.6 seconds.
Jon Armstrong was the third major scalp to fall on Friday. The Irishman, in just his fourth outing in a Rally1 car, and the first on pure tarmac, came within one tenth of a second of winning his maiden WRC stage in the third test, but went too fast into a left hander in stage four and damaged his Puma against a concrete kerb.
Yohan Rossel and Nikolay Gryazin head a Lancia one-two in WRC2 with Alejandro Cachon holding third in his Toyota GR Yaris Rally2
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