In spite of the wet and muddy stages and intermittent rain showers Rovanpera came out guns blazing on Saturday morning, taking the first of five stage victories en route a commanding overnight lead. Evans was second in the opening stage, dropping 2.2 seconds to the rally leader. Evans though, under pressure from Ogier at the close of business on Friday, opened a small breathing space with Neuville, Fourmaux and Pajari holding station in third, fourth and fifth respectively.
Finland bit, though, for 4km into the opening stage, it was game over for Gregoire Munster who rolled his Puma 4km into the first stage of the day.
Stage 12, and Evans’ luck ran out when his Yaris’ right-front driveshaft broke, leaving the luckless Welshman to cruise through 40km of stages, dropping six minutes and plummeting down the order to eighth after stage 13, the final stage of the morning loop.
After service it was back to the now very worn, wet and muddy stages. Rovanpera kept his winning streak intact on stage 14, but one stage later, Esapekka Lappi brought his fellow Finn’s winning streak to an end, pipping the rally leader by half a second.
“I needed to push a bit. I wanted to get a better feeling on this stage than in the morning, the car is working better now. If I remember right, my dad did a really good time on this stage so I needed to do one also so we can both say we did a good time on this stage. In the morning, there was a good fight and we kept pushing today. We did some quite strong times without taking any huge risks, so that is quite positive,” said the rally leader.
It was business as usual after the final stage with Rovanpera heading a Toyota 1-2 by 44.2 seconds up on Ogier. Neuville was in a fine third place, which will do his championship aspirations the world of good. Fourmaux was in a comfortable fourth ahead of Pajari.
In WRC2, there were numerous stage winners: Mikko Heikkila (SS11), Jari-Matti Latvala (SS12), Georg Linnamae (SS13), Oliver Solberg (SS14 and 16) with Robert Virves taking SS15. On the overall leaderboard though, it was Solberg all the way, followed by Latvala and Virves.
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