With very complicated rainy conditions, the Friday of the Rally of Japan was marked by the bad luck that “knocked on the door” of several candidates for the top positions. Elfyn Evans leads comfortably, with a Rally2 in the top five absolute being proof of the unusual events of this round of the World Rally Championship (WRC).
Evans (Toyota) took the lead right away in SS2 (Isegami’s Tunnel 1), in which incidents forced Dani Sordo (Hyundai) and Adrien Fourmaux (M-Sport Ford) to retire. Sébastien Ogier was second, four seconds behind his teammate, while Thierry Neuville (Hyundai) set the third fastest time after leading yesterday’s super special stage.
In the following stage, Evans set the pace again, before the conditions forced the cancellation of SS4 (Shitara Town 1) as they prevented the assistance helicopter from operating. The afternoon started with Takamoto Katsuta (Toyota) setting the pace in the second pass of Isegammi’s Tunnel, but Evans continued to lead the overall classification.
The Japanese driver repeated the result in the next two stages, while Evans remained comfortably in the lead: his main rival, Neuville, was out of contention due to an accident in SS6. This left Ogier chasing Evans, but already far behind his rival. Kalle Rovanperä (Toyota) took advantage and climbed to third.
To end the day, the drivers returned to Toyota Stadium for another super special stage, in which Esapekka Lappi (Hyundai) was one second faster than Ogier and Katsuta. Evans finished sixth, 2.0s behind, but maintained a lead of 1m49.9s in the overall standings after Ogier was penalized by one minute. Rovanperä is in third, 2m06.6s behind the leader.
The big surprise is Andreas Mikkelsen. In a Skoda, the driver not only leads the WRC2 with a 29.4s margin over Nikolay Gryazin (M-Sport Ford), but is also fourth overall. The Norwegian driver was dominant, only losing one of Friday’s stages. On the other hand, the Russian is leading the WRC2 Challenger with a 2m26.4s advantage over Heikki Kovalainen (Skoda) – who is third in the WRC2. The former Formula 1 driver was consistently the main challenger to Gryazin in the WRC2 Challenger, finishing right behind his rival in most of the stages.
Top ten in the overall standings:
