TOYOTA GAZOO Racing World Rally Team remains on top at a spectacular Rally Sweden with Elfyn Evans leading team-mate Takamoto Katsuta by three seconds ahead of the final day.
Saturday’s itinerary was shorter than Friday’s with a total of 97.04 competitive kilometres to be tackled across the seven stages, but the pace at the front remained incredibly high. Less than 10s had covered the top five heading into the day, and the gap between Evans and Katsuta was as low as just 0.1s after the morning’s opening stage, Vännäs.
Resuming his strong performance from Friday, Evans responded with a stage win in the subsequent Sarjöliden test. By the time he won the afternoon’s second pass of the same stage, he had eked out an 8.6s lead, helped by a brief overshoot for Katsuta in the preceding SS12.
Evans went on to have a sideways moment himself in SS14 Kolksele 2, escaping a brush with a snowbank, while Katsuta responded well to the pressure being applied by third-placed Thierry Neuville (Hyundai). A stall in a junction for Evans on the evening’s run through Umeå Sprint further cut his lead, while Katsuta finished the day 3.3s ahead of Neuville.
Kalle Rovanperä had a much stronger Saturday, starting it with a first stage win of the weekend, gaining fifth position overall and being one of the fastest drivers across the day. Rally1 rookie Sami Pajari also continued to make progress as he climbed to seventh overall.
Swedish star Oliver Solberg continues to lead WRC2 in 10th overall ahead of fellow GR Yaris Rally2 driver Roope Korhonen.
Quotes:
Jari-Matti Latvala (Team Principal)
“It has been another very close and exciting day. It was not so easy to watch this last stage of the day with a very icy road and worn tyres, because it’s easy for the drivers to make a mistake there, and unfortunately Elfyn lost some valuable seconds. Still, both Elfyn and Taka have been driving well overall and remain one-two tonight, which is great. But the gaps are very small, also to Neuville behind, so I think the final day is going to be really exciting for everybody to watch. It will be important to push hard but also to manage the level of risk carefully, because the points are valuable for the championship.”
Elfyn Evans (Driver car 33)
“Overall today has been pretty good. It’s a close fight and I think there have been ups and downs for almost everybody at some point. There were just a couple of small mistakes in the last two stages which were quite costly: when the times are so tight there’s not much margin for error. On the penultimate stage I just lost the line ever so slightly, and in the last one the rear stepped out under braking, I locked the wheels and stalled. We need to try and avoid such mistakes tomorrow. Everything is to play for and it should be an exciting day.”
Kalle Rovanperä (Driver car 69)
“Today was definitely much better than yesterday. We did a lot of work with the setup last night, and it felt pretty good on the first stage this morning which was narrow and technical. There we could feel comfortable and have some pace. When the stages are wider with long and fast corners, I’m still looking for some more precision. For tomorrow we’ll try to put everything we have learned this weekend together and aim to score some good points.”
Takamoto Katsuta (Driver car 18)
“It has been a challenging day but quite a strong day I think. This morning I was not completely happy with the feeling in the car and this afternoon I was struggling a bit with the conditions. I had an overshoot and had to reverse, but I think we managed to gain some time back afterwards. The gap is not big in front or behind but it feels good for me to be in this position. Tomorrow will be interesting but I will just try to continue what I’ve been doing the whole weekend and see what happens.”
Sami Pajari (Driver car 5)
“It has been quite a solid day today. The morning especially was really nice and enjoyable for us. There were some stages where I felt I left some margin and some room to improve but still the times were OK. This afternoon there were some trickier conditions on the second pass and I felt I was struggling a bit more there. But overall it has been a good clean day full of learning in different conditions, so there are a lot of good things to take into tomorrow.”
End of day three (Saturday):
1 Elfyn Evans/Scott Martin (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) 2h00m4.2s
2 Takamoto Katsuta/Aaron Johnston (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +3.0s
3 Thierry Neuville/Martijn Wydaeghe (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) +6.3s
4 Ott Tänak/Martin Järveoja (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) +12.8s
5 Kalle Rovanperä/Jonne Halttunen (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +22.9s
6 Mārtiņš Sesks/Renārs Francis (Ford Puma Rally1) +1m31.4s
7 Sami Pajari/Marko Salminen (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +1m43.6s
8 Josh McErlean/Eoin Treacy (Ford Puma Rally1) +2m05.8s
9 Grégoire Munster/Louis Louka (Ford Puma Rally1) +2m45.9s
10 Oliver Solberg/Elliott Edmondson (Toyota GR Yaris Rally2) +6m09.6s
(Results as of 17:40 on Saturday, for the latest results please visit www.wrc.com)
What’s next?
The final day of the rally begins with two passes over Västervik – the longest stage of the rally at 29.35 kilometres – which will be separated by final service. The rally ends with the Umeå Power Stage, where up to five bonus points are on offer alongside the overall and Super Sunday classifications.
