Oliver Solberg and Elliot Edmondson headed a Toyota one-two-three after Saturday’s six stage fight in Chile. The young Swede racked up two stage wins as he extended his lead over Elfyn Evans and Scott Martin to 19.1 seconds at the end of play.
After winning the final stage, he said; “That is the key. Every time, every year. You have to wait with your tyres to the end then go flat out. I’m joking. We have a small gap which is very nice. I will do my very best on Sunday.”
All eyes were on Sebastien Ogier and Vincent Landais as the French pair went on a stage winning rampage taking four stage wins to move into P3 overall and close to within 0.3 seconds of Evans’ second place with one stage remaining.
Evans dug deep on the final stage, the longest of the weekend, beating Ogier by one second as he hung on to second overall.
The championship leader was relieved to cling onto second place: “It was a clean drive. We benefitted from new tyres, but the damage was done in the previous two stages. I can’t be fully satisfied with the afternoon. We hoped to be faster. We keep going.”
Ogier started the day in fourth position behind Hyundai’s Adrien Fourmaux and Alexandre Coria but immediately took the final provisional podium place after the morning’s opening test. Fourmaux fought back, swatting the nine-time WRC Champion back to fourth after SS9 ahead of the midday service.
Photographer: Vincent Thuillier
Worldwide copyright: Hyundai Motorsport GmbH
Ogier moved back into third after the service break and Fourmaux was resigned to P4. His Hyundai suffered some front-end splitter damage after a jump which hampered his fight back.
Sami Pajari and Marko Salminen were in no-mans land in fifth, 51 seconds off the lead and 2½ minutes ahead of the second Hyundai of Esapekka Lappi and Enni Malkonen.
Josh McErlean ended seventh overall after losing chunks of time with a puncture.
The day’s opening stage took car of Thierry Neuville and Nikolay Gryazin who both rolled out of the rally; Neuville was fourth at the time and Gryazin was leading WRC2.
Jon Armstrong retired after rolling in SS8.
Yohan Rossel leads WRC2 in his Lancia Ypsilon with Champion-elect Robert Virves in second.
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