Kalle Rovanperä began the final leg 9.4sec in front of Mikkelsen, but the Hyundai driver’s bid for a second Rally Poland victory was foiled when he crawled to the end of the opening stage with a tyre off the rim. He tumbled to sixth by the finish as M-Sport Ford man Adrien Fourmaux completed the podium 14.4sec behind Evans.
“It’s been quite an amazing week,” smiled Rovanperä. “Definitely I have to say we have been working quite hard and we are really tired now. I think the best thing is we came here, and it was not a bad idea to come. We helped the team a lot and took a lot of points for the manufacturers’ championship, so we didn’t waste our time.”
Mikkelsen was chasing his first victory since 2016 and led through Friday before slipping behind Rovanperä in the penultimate leg. The flailing rubber ripped his i20 N car’s rear wheel arch apart and the Norwegian chose to cruise through the closing stages.
“It was sad what happened today,” he said. “We were really unlucky. The right thing to do [after that] was to bring the car back for the team.”
Barring a tyre delamination on Saturday and a slow puncture in the finale, Evans fared well compared with his main title rivals. The Welshman overtook Ott Tänak to reclaim second in the drivers’ championship and cut Thierry Neuville’s lead to 15 points with six rounds remaining.
M-Sport Ford Puma star Fourmaux, who scored his third podium of the season, ended the rally 28.1sec clear of Belgium’s Neuville while Latvia’s Mārtiņš Sesks delivered a mighty fifth-place finish on his top-flight debut. Sesks, who ran as high as second early in the event, was driving a non-hybrid Puma but will upgrade to a full-spec car for his home round next month.
Mikkelsen limped home over two minutes back from Rovanperä in sixth ahead of Grégoire Munster and Takamoto Katsuta. Ninth place went to Sami Pajari, winner of the WRC2 category, while Oliver Solberg capitalised on a puncture for Robert Virves to sneak into the top 10.
Read the full rally report in Motorsport Monday tomorrow
