Oliver Solberg delivered an impressive Saturday afternoon loop to extend his Rally Chile lead and move a step closer to a second World Rally Championship win of the season.
The Toyota driver took a 10.1s lead over team-mate Elfyn Evans after a hard-fought morning loop that ended with the top four covered by only 20 seconds.
Conscious of the need to preserve his tyres across the rough gravel stages, Solberg initially witnessed Evans cut his advantage down to 9.8s in stage 10 (Pelun 2).
Solberg was able to respond in the following two stages, beating Evans in both tests. A stunning drive to win stage 12 (Maria las Cruces 2, 28.31km) by 3.7s from Evans was enough to establish a 19.1s lead over the championship leader ahead of Sunday’s final four stages. Solberg made up the time in the final downhill section of the stage.
“The first stage tomorrow is extremely difficult, but at least we’ve got a small gap now which is very nice. For the championship sake I need to do my classic powerstage and Sunday don’t I? So I’ll do my best,” said Solberg.
Evans’ focus for much of the afternoon was on keeping hold of second position rather than chasing down Solberg. The Welshman had to deal with a charging nine-time world champion Sebastien Ogier.
Ogier started the afternoon loop sitting in fourth, 1.9s behind Hyundai’s Adrien Fourmaux, although the reigning world champion reclaimed third from Fourmaux for the third time today after winning stage 10. Ogier was 2.5s quicker than Fourmaux which created a 0.6s gap between the countrymen.
Ogier then heaped the pressure on Evans by setting the fastest time in stage 11 (Lota 2), where he took 6.1s out of his team-mate to sit just 0.3s behind heading into the final stage of the day.
However, Evans was able to dig deep and respond in the last stage of the loop. Evans was able to beat Ogier by a second to hold onto second spot, while Ogier completed the day in third, 20.4s from the lead.
“It was a clean drive. We benefited from new tyres but the damage was done in the previous two stages. I can’t be fully satisfied with the afternoon. We hoped to be faster. We keep going,” said Evans.
Fourmaux had to settle for fourth after losing ground in stage 12 as a gamble to take three softs and one hard tyre didn’t pay off. The Hyundai driver pulled a similar strategy in the morning which gave him a stage win on the first pass, but he couldn’t repeat the feat and was left frustrated.
“It is a big nightmare to work with the tyres,” said Fourmaux, who will head into Sunday 18.2s from the lead and 10.7s behind third-placed Ogier. “There was no abrasiveness in Paraguay and the tyres were just exploding, and here it’s like a cheese wrap.”
Title contender Sami Pajari rounded out the top five having found himself in no man’s land, 1m15.5s from the lead.
“Not so many stories to tell from today. We are not quite on the pace where we would like to be. There is a lot of discussion about road position playing a big role, but still at the end of the day the pace is not what we wanted. Hopefully we can be quicker on Super Sunday,” said Pajari.
Despite being hampered by road position, Hyundai’s Esapekka Lappi enjoyed a much better day as the Finn climbed to sixth. M-Sport-Ford’s Josh McErlean finished Saturday in seventh after surviving a left rear puncture in the morning and an issue with his car that prompted a one minute delay leaving midday service.
McErlean’s team-mate Jon Armstrong rolled his Ford Puma onto its side in the morning’s stage eight, and was forced to retire.
Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville was also forced to retire after rolling his i20 N in stage seven, and won’t restart the rally on Sunday due to damage sustained to the car.
Lancia’s Yohan Rossel will take a 58.0s lead in WRC2 over championship leader Robert Virves.
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– The Autosport.com Team
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