Rally Italia Sardegna: Day 2 - Solberg leads TGR-WRT contenders

TOYOTA GAZOO Racing World Rally Team driver Oliver Solberg is third overall after the first full day of Rally Italia Sardegna as he heads the team’s trio of title challengers.

After Thursday’s short opening super special stage, crews now faced two loops of demanding gravel stages in the north-east of the island. Although the rally is taking place four months later than usual, the conditions have so far remained dry, dusty and rocky as usual.

As the top three in the championship coming into the deciding round, GR YARIS Rally1 drivers Elfyn Evans, Sami Pajari and Oliver Solberg faced some of the toughest conditions running at the front of the road order, each one cleaning a line through the loose sandy gravel for everyone else behind to follow.

Solberg, with a 21-point gap to close to Evans, led the rally coming into the day but dropped to seventh after the morning’s first stage having sustained a loss of tyre pressure near the end. He fought back strongly, winning the morning’s final test to move back up to third place ahead of Pajari, who enjoyed a consistently strong morning. Sébastien Ogier also lost time with tyre damage in SS3 but ended the morning fifth, with Evans rounding out the top six.

Continuing to push in the afternoon, Solberg came close to another stage win on the second pass of the loop’s final test and finished the day in third overall, 12.3 seconds away from leader Thierry Neuville (Hyundai).

Ogier moved ahead of Pajari for fourth in the day’s final stage by 2.8s, while Evans ended the day just over a minute back from the lead in sixth and still leading the virtual championship standings.

Takamoto Katsuta is ninth overall having stopped to change a wheel and tyre in SS4 and conceded more time with further loss of tyre pressure later in the day.

Gus Greensmith leads Roope Korhonen in a GR Yaris Rally2 one-two in the WRC2 category, with Teemu Suninen slipping from first to seventh after he had to stop and change a tyre in the day’s final stage.

Quotes:
Jari-Matti Latvala (Team Principal)
“This was a demanding day as expected, especially for our drivers who were running at the front of the road order and sweeping a line through the loose gravel. Compared to Elfyn and Sami in front of him, Oliver had more chance to attack from third on the road and he used that really well, keeping himself within striking distance of the two Hyundai drivers, Neuville and Fourmaux. That certainly keeps the championship fight interesting with two days to go, but I think that Elfyn and Sami also did what they could today and avoided any problems, so nobody’s chances are over and it will be exciting to follow again tomorrow.”

Elfyn Evans (Driver car 33)
“It’s been a tough day, like we anticipated in our position. We didn’t make a bad start this morning, and generally everything has felt quite OK in the car, but the stage times were just not where we would have wanted them to be, especially this afternoon. We at least managed to avoid trouble, which is important, and our position overall is not far off what we could have hoped for today. Tomorrow our road position will be much better, and although it might be tricky to try and close any gaps ahead, we just need to keep doing what we can and keep ourselves in a good position.”

Sébastien Ogier (Driver car 1)
“We didn’t have the best day today; we would have hoped to be higher than fourth tonight. Unfortunately it didn’t go my way this morning and most of our time loss came with this puncture. After that I was probably a bit too cautious, trying to avoid every stone and stay out of trouble, and so we weren’t especially fast. It wasn’t an ideal day but we will try to be better tomorrow, hope we can focus on enjoying the driving, and see what happens.”

Oliver Solberg (Driver car 99)
“It’s been a great day for us. I think we can be happy with the job we’ve done considering our road position. We were unfortunate to lose about six seconds with the puncture in the first stage this morning, but lucky on the other hand not to lose more time. I was a bit cautious on the second pass of that stage to avoid another issue, but on the other two stages we pushed quite hard and had a good feeling in the car. We will just continue with the same strategy tomorrow, trying to avoid trouble but also see if we can close the gaps in front with more equal road positions.”

Takamoto Katsuta (Driver car 18)
“It’s been a frustrating day for us. The conditions on the stages were pretty rough, and we were trying to get through without any problems. Unfortunately we had to stop and change a tyre in the third stage of the loop – it seems that we were not the only ones to have issues in that one. Going into the afternoon we were hoping to avoid any further issues, but still we lost some time with some punctures. Hopefully tomorrow we can have a cleaner day and find a good feeling.”

Sami Pajari (Driver car 5)
“It’s been a tricky day but I feel like we probably did all that we could. It’s difficult to judge our performance given the road positions, as we were quicker than Elfyn in all the stages but not as fast as Oliver. I was quite happy with the job that we did in the morning, and we were not too far away, but the afternoon seemed to be more difficult and unfortunately we just lost one position at the end. At least we have avoided any issues, so we are still in the fight and nothing is lost. Tomorrow our road position should be better and let’s see if our pace can also be stronger and we can keep up the fight.”

End of day two (Friday):
1 Thierry Neuville/Martijn Wydaeghe (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) 1h25m04.9s
2 Adrien Fourmaux/Alexandre Coria (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) +0.4s
3 Oliver Solberg/Elliott Edmondson (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +12.3s
4 Sébastien Ogier/Vincent Landais (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +37.4s
5 Sami Pajari/Marko Salminen (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +40.2s
6 Elfyn Evans/Scott Martin (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +1m08.9s
7 Josh McErlean/Eoin Treacy (Ford Puma Rally1) +1m21.1s
8 Jon Armstrong/Shane Byrne (Ford Puma Rally1) +3m26.5s
9 Takamoto Katsuta/Aaron Johnston (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +3m27.2s
10 Mārtiņš Sesks/Renārs Francis (Ford Puma Rally1) +3m39.9s
(Results as of 18:00 on Friday, for the latest results please visit www.wrc.com)

What's next?
Saturday’s route follows a similar format to Friday with two loops of stages run either side of service, although it is slightly longer at 123.66 competitive kilometres and includes a completely new test – Salorche – to round out each loop.