He was still in quite a good position after the morning, but this afternoon it was more difficult with rougher and rutted roads and unfortunately he had quite a big accident in the penultimate stage. For Elfyn we knew it would be a tough job today being the first car on the road. He was maybe not completely happy to begin with this morning, but he was able to tweak the car setup, find the confidence and then he was flying for the rest of the day. I could sense that his motivation is really high to get a victory.
The big positive has been Kalle’s performance. “It has obviously been a day of mixed feelings for us. The team will inspect the damage to the car when it is recovered to the service park this evening. He would go off the road in SS7 both Evans and co-driver Scott Martin were thankfully OK. A strong time in SS3 meant he ended the morning in fifth overall and within 20s of the lead, but the afternoon loop would prove to be tougher. He was unfortunately unable to start SS3 following an issue related to the alternator, which has been resolved so that he can restart tomorrow.įor Evans it was a difficult day opening the road, creating cleaner lines for his rivals to follow. Stepping into the team’s main three-car line-up for the second time this season, Takamoto Katsuta made an encouraging start to the day and was level with Rovanperä for fourth position after two stages.
After the new super special stage at Figueira da Foz that rounded out the day, Rovanperä’s lead is 10.8s. He took the lead with a stage win in SS5, took another fastest time in SS6 and came within 0.4 seconds of a hat-trick in SS7, where he nonetheless increased his advantage into double figures. On an event he won last year, Rovanperä made a positive start, winning the third stage of the day to end the morning loop in second overall and just three seconds from the lead. After Thursday night’s ceremonial start in the historic city of Coimbra, there were a total of eight tests to be tackled in the surrounding area without returning north to Porto for mid-day service. As the leading contenders in a super-close drivers’ championship after four rounds, both Elfyn Evans and Rovanperä faced tough conditions running at the front of the road order on the loose gravel stages.
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