Oliver Solberg and Elliot Edmondson ended the first day of Rally Chile with a 10.1 second lead over Elfyn Evans and Scott Martin with Adrien Fourmaux and Alexandre Coria heading the Hyundai challenge on the final step of the provisional podium.
Overnight rain made the three stages of the morning loop wet and muddy, which helped Evans, running first on the road, to stay in contention and even took the rally lead from Solberg after winning SS2 before Solberg fought back and steadily built up a double digit lead over his Welsh Toyota Gazoo Racing teammate.
The first five stages saw five different stage winners; Thierry Neuville, Sami Pajari and Sebastien Ogier all took a scratch time while Solberg won stage six.
Behind Fourmaux, Ogier and co-driver Vincent Landais made a strong play for P3 but had to settle for fourth place, 1.6 seconds ahead of Pajari and Marko Salminen who were cautious in the tricky morning loop.
Neuville was sixth, complaining of a lack of confidence in the handling of his i20 N. Jon Armstrong and Shane Byrne headed the M-Sport Ford challenge ending the day six tenths ahead of teammates Josh McErlean and Eoin Treacy in seventh and eighth respectively.
Behind the Puma pair, Esapekka Lappi was an unhappy chappie in ninth, at a loss as to his lack of pace.
Takamoto Katsuta’s horror South American trip continued with another stage one retirement. The rear of his GR Yaris stepped out and hit a bank which catapulted the car off the road and down a small embankment and with no spectators in the area to get the car back on to the road, it was game over for the dejected Japanese star.
Nikolay Gryazin won the opening two stages in his Lancia Ypsilon HF to lead the WRC2 category from Robert Virves, the WRC2 championship leader who won stage five. Yohan Rossel took stage three and four.
Stage six was red-flagged after an incident involving Alejandro Cachon.
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