Kalle Rovanpera asserted himself at the top of the Rally de Portugal standings after carving out a 57.5s lead in which the majority of the gap was made in the first three stages of the day. Dani Sordo sits in second place with team-mate, Thierry Neuville, third.
Day two sees the crews tackle another 150km of tough Portuguese terrain in the Cabreira Mountains. Two runs through Vieira do Minho, Amarante and Felgueiras are separated by service with the final stage of the day taking place at the fan-favourite Lousada rallycross circuit.
Rovanpera started the first leg in impervious form as he won the first three tests of the day. The Finn started the day just 10.8s ahead of Dani Sordo, however that ballooned to 52.4s by the time the cars reached service. The first stage set the tone as Rovanpera was 12.8s quicker than the next car and then was a huge 21.7s faster than second-place man Sordo through the following stage.
“I just woke up today and thought that we should drive a bit of a rally,” said the Finn at the end of the morning leg. “We have done a few good mornings, but this was a really good one. The whole loop was good, and we will try to continue like this.”
Although the times would fluctuate over the afternoon stages, Rovanpera’s lead never dropped below 50s with the Toyota man leading by 59.4s heading into the Lousada super special stage. The test saw Rovanpera close the day with a 57.5s lead over Dani Sordo and with only four stages remaining, last year’s champion has victory in his grasp.
In the battle for third, there was drama for M-Sport driver, Pierre-Louis Loubet. The Frenchman suffered from damage after a heavy impact towards the end of the Amarante stage which meant that he had to retire the car.
This left the two Hyundai’s of Esapekka Lappi and Thierry Neuville to fight it out for third. Lappi headed the Belgian at the end of the morning runs but Neuville was only 0.9s behind the Finn as they got going in the afternoon. Lappi would keep hold of third until SS13, where he dropped 8.5s to his teammate, meaning that Neuville was now in the hot seat. It stayed that way after the super special stage however the two are only separated by 2.3s with one day left.
Tanak sits fifth after Loubet’s retirement and trails fourth place by over 1min 10s. The Estonian was the last Rally1 car in the top six as Elfyn Evans and his crew were unable to restart the rally due to the damage that was sustained in his crash on Friday.
In WRC2, Oliver Solberg still heads the leaderboard with Gus Greensmith and Andreas Mikkelsen following behind.
Standings after Saturday
- Rovanpera 2hr 59min 48.5s
- Sordo +57.5s
- Neuville +1min 8.6s
- Lappi +1min 10.9s
- Tanak +2min 21.8s
- Solberg +8min 8.3s (WRC2)
