An incredible day’s rallying saw two distinct battles unfold; the first for the rally win, and the second for the FIA World Rally Championship.
Thierry Neuville and Martijn Wydaeghe took three stage wins from Friday’s six stages to snatch the rally lead by four tenths of a second from teammates Adrien Fourmaux and Alexandre Coria to head a Hyundai one-two after 120km of hard, rough and very dusty rallying.
Fourmaux took the lead after SS3 and maintained it through the day; after the midday service the Frenchman – desperately chasing his maiden win – opened the gap to 8.2 seconds over Neuville, only for the Belgian to put in concerted charge and reel in the sister Hyundai.
“I was there, our tyre management and our tyre choice paid off. So, I was at the moment tempted to make a similar choice to him (Fourmaux), but at the end I was pretty confident that my feeling was the good one, and I’m happy with that.”
“But anyhow, good for Hyundai and for Adrien as well, so it’s a nice battle, and hopefully, yeah, we can continue tomorrow. It’s a bit of work to do to get me still more comfortable in the car. I feel like I can drive fast, but I still miss this person I was before to push hard and just be more relaxed. At the moment I’m stressing a bit too much,” said the on-form rally leader.
Oliver Solberg and Elliot Edmondson set the benchmark time on Thursday evening’s opening arena super special stage but when the rally proper started, he suffered a puncture near the end of the opening stage of the day, dropping to seventh overall and 11.2 seconds off the lead.
A mesmerizing drive saw the young Swedish Toyota driver comfortably outpace his title rivals to move into fourth in the overall classification on the following stage. A stage win on SS4, the last test of the morning loop saw Solberg pass Pajari for third.
Pajari was reasonably satisfied with his day. “There was one narrow lonely line there, which I really tried to follow. But yeah, I think overall today we did pretty much what we could have done. It’s still two more days to go, and I hope we are ready for the fight.”
On the final stage of the day, Ogier, who suffered a puncture in SS3, clawed his way back up the order and demoted Pajari down to fifth on the final stage of the day.
Elfyn Evans and Scott Martin were brutally hammered opening the road. The championship leaders slipped further and further down the order, ending the day in sixth overall, well over a minute off the lead. It is probably the only time in his life that the Welshman hopes Hyundai win the rally to deny his rivals the big points!
“We’re here. Let’s see. I guess tomorrow will be the test how we are going to respond to the road position.”, was Evans’ deadpan comment after the final stage.
Josh McErlean, Jon Armstrong, Takamoto Katsuta and Martins Sesks rounded out the top ten, the latter three all suffering punctures during the day.
In WRC2, Virves suffered two punctures. The category leader is Gus Greensmith, followed by Roope Korhonen.
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