Saturday was the longest day of the rally. Starting 10.2 seconds behind his Toyota Gazoo Racing teammate, Elfyn Evans immediately went on the attack on Saturday morning, instantly trimming the Frenchman’s lead down to 8.9 seconds and then inched closer after stage nine.
Evans took his career 200th stage win at the next time of asking in stage ten, to trim Ogier’s lead to just two seconds. The Welshman wasn’t done as he won the following stage as well, and Ogier was sweating as his lead came down to 1.4 seconds with three stages remaining for the day.
Ogier finally responded, pipping Evans in stage 12 by 0.3 seconds. Not much, but after the penultimate stage of the day, Ogier had 4.9 seconds in hand. The eight-time WRC Champion took his third stage win on the bounce to end the day with a 6.5 second cushion over Evans.
Ogier summed up his day: “I feel that I’ve done a good job this afternoon, but I could have done better this morning – I think that’s the summary of the day. In the end we cannot be unsatisfied with what we’ve done. Elfyn was driving very well with strong pace. In the morning we lost a bit too much ground, especially in the last stage of the loop, but after that we had a good response. The gaps were still incredibly small, but going into the last day in the lead can only be positive. The conditions will probably be extra challenging for everybody, and we will have to be on it straight away.”
“Overall it’s been a good day. This morning things were going well and working much better than yesterday. I was maybe driving more smoothly also, and we were able to close the gap to Seb. We still had good runs through the first two stages this afternoon, but then probably gave away more than I would have liked in the last two,” said Evans.
Sunday is going to be tense.
Adrien Fourmaux took the first two stage wins of the day, giving Hyundai some hope that their i20 N could be competitive on tarmac. The leading Hyundai driver ended the day in third overall, after Takamoto Katsuta, running in second, ran wide and hit a water-filled plastic barrier, sustaining damage to the steering system in stage 11 and saw the distraught home hero plummet to 22nd although they ultimately retired after exceeding the time limit and will return tomorrow under restart rules.
Fourmaux was happy with his day’s work. “I was really satisfied with my pace today, it was one of my best days of the season so far. I felt very comfortable pushing on every stage, and with two stage wins and getting close on the others it’s been really positive. I continued to push with the setup we had, and it’s been working well. Tomorrow will be a difficult day, so I will keep my head down and focus on pushing in the wet.”
Sami Pajari ended fourth after a composed day in his GR Yaris Rally1, with Ott Tänak fifth for Hyundai and Grégoire Munster sixth for M-Sport Ford. Kalle Rovanperä continued to recover after the time he lost with damage on Friday, climbing up from 17th to seventh place overall and with a chance to gain bonus points towards his title hopes on Sunday.
Behind them, Oliver Solberg moved up to eighth overall, while Alejandro Cachón maintained his control of WRC2 in ninth ahead of Nikolay Gryazin, who again struggled for front-end grip.
Thierry Neuville endured a frustrating start to the day, spotting a broken driveshaft before the opening stage and limping through before retiring his i20 N soon afterwards.
AloJapan.com