The first Central European Rally counting for the World Rally Championship (WRC) is underway. Thierry Neuville is the leader after the first two stages, which took place this Thursday.
The event started with a short super-special stage in Velká Chuchle, with Ott Tänak (M-Sport Ford) being the fastest, beating Sébastien Ogier (Toyota) by 0.7s. Thierry Neuville (Hyundai) finished third, exactly one second behind, while the championship leader, Kalle Rovanperä (Toyota), had a discreet start, finishing 11th, four seconds behind.
This was followed by Stage 2 in Klatovy, in which Neuville set the pace, finishing 2.2s ahead of Tänak to take the lead. The Belgian is leading with a 1.2s advantage over the same rival, also surpassing Ogier who finished fifth in this stage. Rovanperä achieved the third-best time, climbing to fourth place and pushing Teemu Suninen (Hyundai) down to fifth. Elfyn Evans (Toyota) locked the brakes at a junction and lost time, currently sitting in eighth place, 10.7s behind the leader and less than five seconds behind Rovanperä.
In WRC2, Andreas Mikkelsen (Skoda) came out on top in Stage 1 before Yohan Rossel (Citroën) was the strongest in the second stage, leading with a 3.2s margin over the Norwegian, who finished fourth in that stage. Nikolay Gryazin (Skoda) is currently in third place, 4.7s behind, and leads the WRC2 Challenge with just eight tenths of a second ahead of Kajetan Kajetanowicz (Skoda) and Nicolas Ciamin (Skoda). As for WRC3, Filip Kohn set the pace in Stage 2 and overtook the winner of the first stage, Fabio Schwarz, to lead with a 6.8s advantage over the rival.
Top ten overall after Stage 2:
