Elfyn Evans and Scott Martin continue to lead the seventh round of the World Rally Championship with 17.8 seconds in hand over Sebastien Ogier and Vincent Landais with Sami Pajari and Marko Salminen once again in a strong podium position while the home hero Takamoto Katsuta and co-driver Aaron Johnston hold fourth overall after Day Two on Rally Japan.
With a strong lead, Ogier suggested Evans was “uncatchable”. Evans replied; “I don’t know about that [hearing Ogier said he is ‘uncatchable’]. It’s rallying at the end of the day, you know anything can happen. So, we have to keep our head down and do the best job we can. That stage was fine. No drama.”
The day started with Oliver Solberg and Elliot Edmondson targeting Evans and opening the margin to Ogier behind, who had ended Friday 1.4 seconds behind the young Swede.
Solberg took 3.2 seconds out of Evans in the opening test, but the Welshman fought back on SS8. Solberg took SS9 to bring the gap down to 10.6 seconds heading into the tyre fitting zone.
Evans found himself with a 14.6 second lead after SS10 after Solberg crashed out. A dirty cut saw the GR Yaris’ rear step out and smack a tree which broke the right rear suspension. Game over and second position gone.
When Ogier was told of Solberg’s retirement, he responded: “It is not a surprise. This morning the risk he [Solberg] is taking was too high. Unfortunately, it is not really a surprise. It is a shame. It was an ok run.”
Toyota’s sporting director Kaj Lindstrom reacted to Solberg’s off. “I think Seb is the best one to tell [if Oliver was pushing too hard or not] It is a very unfortunate situation and it looks like he can’t continue for today.”
Solberg explained his retirement. “A big disappointment again on tarmac unfortunately it’s been tough. We were fighting good. I felt really good in the car, very comfortable. I wasn’t really pushing anything crazy, just trying to do what I did all weekend. I just come down to this place, and it had quite slippy cuts and was muddy. I didn’t really expect this when I arrived and just braked a little bit too late and hit that pole and broke the rear suspension.”
Behind the Toyota top three, Katsuta bumped Thierry Neuville down a position in the opening stage of the day and ended the longest day of the rally in fourth.
Stage nine saw Adrien Fourmaux and Alexandre Coria resume their usual ‘best of Hyundai’ position, knocking Neuville down a place as the Belgian struggled with intermittent handbrake problems.
Pajari took three stage wins from the final four tests of the afternoon but overall, the gaps are quite large. Evans will lead the rally in to the final day by 17.8sec over Ogier, with Pajari in third, 44.4sec behind.
“I’m very pleased with the afternoon loop in general. I was hoping to find more pace and that’s exactly what we did. Taking a couple of stage wins, from that side it’s really okay,” said Pajari.
Neuville holds sixth ahead of Hayden Paddon/John Kennard and Jon Armstrong/Shayne Byrne.
In WRC2, Nikolay Gryazin took the lead off Alejandro Cachon in the second stage of the morning with Yuki Yamamoto heading for his maiden WRC2 podium in third, the Lancia and Toyota Spain drivers holding ninth and tenth overall respectively
Discussion about this post