Elfyn Evans continues to dominate Rally GB in Wales

Wily observers always said that Wales Rally GB would be sorted on the Saturday with the already long hard day ending with two night stages. And they were so right, only thing is no one had M-Sport/DMACK’s Elfyn Evans tagged as the man who would emerge from the forests in prime position!

Evans not only maintained his rally lead but consolidated it with an early string of stage wins before fog shook up the event going into the two night stages. And the man to benefit most from this unwanted interloper was teammate Seb Ogier who moved up to second place and even closer to clinching his fifth World Rally Championship on his team’s home soil.

But it wasn’t a walk in the park for Oggi as he rather embarrassingly went off the first of the night stages into a ditch and picked up a puncture and some damage to his brakes. All in all the whole field was affected, with visibility issues being report throughout the field as the fog moved in on the 14km Stage 15 – Aberhirnant – that was the start of the night loop.

And despite Evans dropping time (he was only seventh on the stage), he went into the final stage of the day even further in the lead as his closest chasers fared even worse. Among those losing out was Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville who dropped to third and teammate Ott Tänak who went from hero (second) to zero (sixth) in the blink of a stage!

RelatedPosts

Ex-F1 stalwart rejects driver ‘noise’ on controversial new regulations

12 hours ago

Bianca Bustamante and Zak O’Sullivan slated for Formula E test

15 hours ago

After picking up a full 20-sec on the stage, Oggi had to stop between stages to change a tyre and jury-rig his brakes before attempting the final stage of the day – Dyfnant – with just three functioning brake callipers where he only lost 3.5-sec to his nearest chaser Neuville!

On Sunday morning Evans will start 53.1-sec ahead of Ogier who is turn is just 0.5-sec ahead of a hard charging Thierry Neuville.

While any hopes of catching Evans are out of the equation there is all to play for during Sunday’s five stages and nearly 42km of rallying with five drivers all within 13-sec of Ogier’s second place.

Chasing in fourth is Toyota’s Jari-Matti Latvala; just 4.1-sec behind Neuville and he is in turn pursued by Hyundai new boy Andreas Mikkelsen a further 5.9-sec down the road. Long time second place man Ott Tänak is next up in sixth, but just 2.5-sec behind Mikkelsen.

So second place is all to play for tomorrow, assuming Evans keeps it on the island!

Top 10 Results After Day 3