Kalle Rovenpera won all six stages on Friday while those around him withered in the harsh African stages closing his day’s work with a handy 56.9 second lead and fronting a Toyota 1-2-3
The first casualty saw Neuville pick up a puncture early in stage three but elected to continue, causing substantial damage to his car which lost the right-rear fender and punched a hole through the inner bodywork. Concerned about dust leaking into the cabin in the following stage, he and Martijn did some bush mechanic work, creating a windscreen mop from a stick and piece of cloth.
Neuville donned a mask and both wore goggles and arrived at the end of the 31km fourth stage without too much trouble.
Lappi and Tanak dropped further behind the flying Toyota after Rovanpera set a blistering time 11.1 seconds faster than anyone else before the midday service at Naivasha. Suddenly, after just under 64km of rough and dusty rallying, Rovanpera had a very defendable lead of 15.5 seconds, all things being equal.
The three stages were repeated and almost immediately it was game over for Lappi when his Hyundai’s gearbox cried enough, leaving Katsuta in third albeit 41 seconds off the lead and 1.8 seconds ahead of Evans, who’d lacked confidence in his car’s handling all morning.
Neuville was in fifth followed by M-Sport Ford’s pair of Fourmaux and Munster
One stage later, Hyundai’s Safari bad luck continued unabated when Tanak crashed out. The car hit a huge rock on the racing line which launched the car into an earth bank, the impact destroying the right-front suspension.
The scorecard read: Kenya 2.5, Hyundai 0.5
Katsuta was promoted into second place but ¾ of a minute behind the #69 Toyota. Neuville could smell the podium and beat both Katsuta and Evans to close to 6.5 seconds from a podium in the day’s final stage. In the championship race, this was important for the Belgian…
In the final stage of the day, Evans blitzed his Japanese teammate to take second overall, while Neuville lay fourth with a comfortable cushion over the Ford Puma pair.
In WRC2, it was no less dramatic, for Oliver Solberg suffered a puncture in stage three and another in stage four, each costing around two minutes. After that, it was flat out for Solberg who languished in third but 3 min 37 seconds behind his Toksport Skoda teammate Gus Greensmith who held a 3:23 over Pole Kajetan Kajetanowicz in another Fabia RS.
