Elfyn Evans has extended his Rally Sweden lead into double figures over defending world champion Ott Tänak for the first time all weekend with another stage win in his Toyota Yaris WRC.
Saturday’s itinerary is a mirror image of Friday’s, acting as the second pass crews would normally face on Friday afternoon.
Takamoto Katsuta, who opened the road, admitted the surface “is more soft” than it was on Friday with warmer temperatures, meaning the layer of loose snow could soon be swept from all the stages.
Evans won the 13.2-mile Hof-Finnskog test on Friday and repeated the feat on Saturday, stretching his lead from 8.5 seconds to 11.7s, therefore outpacing Tänak by 3.2s on the stage.
“It’s been an OK morning but difficult in there,” Evans said. “The grip was very high but also in places a little bit lower than everyone else.”
Tänak’s advantage over third-placed man Kalle Rovanperä is now up to 9.5s but the Hyundai driver admitted he was missing the “go-kart feeling” from his i20 WRC.
“[We] still [don’t have] as good [a] feeling as I was hoping for so I still need to improve. It’s just a go-kart feeling [that’s missing],” he revealed.
Sébastien Ogier found himself in the unusual position of the lowest placed driver in his team on Friday. But Ogier was still fourth, such has been Toyota’s dominance.
Determined to find the same pace team-mates Evans and Rovanperä did on Friday, Ogier seemingly discovered something on Saturday morning as he ate 3.4s out of Rovanperä to trail by a slender 0.1s in fourth overall.
Craig Breen seemingly backed off on Friday’s concluding Torsby Sprint stage so as to not overhaul team-mate Thierry Neuville into sixth. That afforded Neuville a slightly better road position so he could hopefully make inroads on those ahead of him.
The tactic seemingly worked as he outpaced Breen by 6.2s on Hof-Finnskog and Esapekka Lappi by 1.5s to slash his deficit to Lappi in fifth to just 1.2s.
“I’m happy for my driving, it’s clearly better than yesterday,” Lappi said. “I can’t do more than that to be honest, so it needs to be fine.”
Breen meanwhile wasn’t so happy: “That’s not very good I don’t think. I obviously feel better in the car than I did yesterday but I need to be doing better than that.”
Teemu Suninen remains in eighth place overall ahead of Katsuta, with WRC3 leader Emil Lindholm rounding out the top 10 in his Skoda Fabia R5. Mads Ostberg is just 1.8s behind in 11th as the lead WRC2 runner.
Leading positions
1 Evans (Toyota)
2 Tänak (Hyundai) +11.7s
3 Rovanperä (Toyota) +21.2s
4 Ogier (Toyota) +21.3s
5 Lappi (M-Sport Ford) +28.2s
6 Neuville (Hyundai) +29.4s
7 Breen (Hyundai) +36.2s
8 Suninen (M-Sport Ford) +46.4s
9 Katsuta (Toyota) +1m06.6s
10 Lindholm (Skoda) +2m30.1s
