Evans and Toyota on top as rivals falter in Portugal

The two Toyota GR Yaris Rally1 drivers managed to escape the worst of the conditions on the gravel classic to reach the overnight halt in Matosinhos separated by 13.6 seconds.

Round four of the World Rally Championship opened in style on Thursday night as Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville got the jump on his rivals through the Coimbra street stage by 0.6 seconds.

Friday – the busiest leg of the rally with eight speed tests – began at ‘Lousa’. Come the end of it, Neuville had made way for last year’s winner Elfyn Evans and the Puma Rally1 of Gus Greensmith which was in hot pursuit.

Ott Tanak showed early promise in third, while the pace of Neuville was stymied by lingering dust clouds through the stage. Sebastien Ogier – a 5-time winner in Portugal – was gradually finding his feet having been out of the GR Yaris Rally1 car since January’s Rallye Monte Carlo.

Craig Breen, Pierre-Louis Loubet and Sebastien Loeb formed a M-Sport freight train in sixth, seventh and eighth and Championship leader Kalle Rovanpera occupied tenth as he lost time hand over fist because of road sweeping duties that really took their toll on his Pirelli rubber.

Evans increased his lead from 4.4 to 5 seconds following SS3 – ‘Gois’ – but it was all change behind him. Tanak climbed to second despite not being entirely satisfied at the balance of his I20 N Rally1 supermini and Ogier pushed his way from fifth to third. It was a stage to forget for the three points-scoring M-Sport Ford crews as choking dust found its way into all of their cars' cockpits.

Breen dropped to fourth as a result but the biggest casualty was Greensmith. Now in tenth, he wasn’t best pleased and told stage end reporters that he had raised the issue with mechanics following Thursday morning’s shakedown stage. In stark contrast Loeb – somehow – managed to make up a position despite the veteran Frenchman being covered from head to foot in dirt.

What followed, few could believe. 9-time champion Loeb traversed the final Friday morning stage – ‘Arganil’ – 10.6 seconds quicker than Evans to snatch the lead of the rally. “It was a good drive,” was Loeb’s no nonsense assessment. A clearly unhappy Evans attributed his poor run to a lack of all-round traction even though his road position was equally as favourable as Loeb’s.

Also on the move was Neuville, his I20 N supermini occupying third ahead of Tanak in fourth. “I don’t have the feeling with the car,” explained Tanak, who admitted pre-event Rally de Portugal would be a voyage of discovery for him and those working in his corner of the service park.

The biggest winner of the morning was Rovanpera, however. With no spare wheels in the boot of his Yaris, the talented Finn made it to the tyre fitting zone in good spirits and in front of Ogier and Breen, his Toyota running-mate Takamoto Katsuta and Rally1 debutant, Dani Sordo.

But no sooner had Loeb worked his way into the lead he lost it again. 20 metres into the second pass over ‘Lousa’ – the first stage after the lunchtime interval – the rear of his Puma Rally1 drifted wide and the right-rear wheel smacked a wall. He tried to carry on but the damage was terminal. Parked up, his attention now turns to Saturday when he is expected to re-join.

With the ball back in his court, Evans was not prepared to go at ten tenths given the fact the roads were cutting up badly in some sections. “It’s quite tricky and difficult to know where or how much to push, really,” he said.

2.1 seconds stood between him and Neuville who was now coming under growing pressure from a new – and familiar – foe in the guise of Ogier. In one stage, the Toyota returnee clawed back three positions.

The car-breaking conditions were beginning to rattle Rovanpera – “It’s worse than expected and it feels bad in the car" – but things were looking up for Breen after his mechanics applied sealant to the area they suspected of allowing dust to creep in.

But it wasn’t long before he hit trouble again. He trundled to the stop line of SS6 with no hybrid and the front-left tyre on the rim. “This stage is completely destroyed. I could have got it in about 150 places because there's boulders everywhere. It's a lottery,” he said. Whereas he elected to drive on, Ogier and Tanak stopped to change their punctures before getting going again.

The drama continued into SS7 when Ogier – mid-way through ‘Arganil 2’ – picked up a second puncture. With no more spares, he had to throw the towel in for the day. Another left feeling a tad deflated was Greensmith in sixth, a kiss with a sharp rock enough to nick the sidewall of the rear-left wheel on his car. It was another stage to forget for Breen, too, as he drove the entire 18.72km stretch with no hybrid power.

Elsewhere, distracted by the wear to his hard compound shoes, Neuville allowed Evans to extend his buffer to 7 seconds. Rovanpera stayed put in third despite “scooping dust” into his Yaris that led to visibility and breathing problems on occasions, with a red-hot Loubet charging up the timesheets to fourth.

‘Mortagua’ was the final ‘proper’ Friday stage before the concluding short, sharp, side-by-side blast around the Lousada rallycross circuit and it too had plenty of stories to tell. The rallying gods continued to look down on Evans as he steered clear of trouble while those behind him battled to stay in the game.

Neuville dropped almost 90 seconds on the penultimate stage as he nursed a driveshaft issue that developed on the road section and slipped from second to seventh overall; Loubet overcooked a left-hander and lost over half-a-minute to fall two places to sixth; and Breen ploughed into a bank near the end of the run to make his task of leaving round four with silverware that bit harder.

Having quietly gone about his business for the day, Sordo now found himself in third, 6.3 seconds up on Katsuta. A further 8.1 seconds back in fifth was Greensmith. It was a day even those paid to keep across the sport found the going a little bit tricky.

The spectator special brought the curtain down on a frenetic Friday and it was Evans who ended it the happiest, top of the timesheets from Rovanpera and well positioned to claim his first victory of 2022 - a result that would reignite his WRC title aspirations.

"I am pretty happy to be here at the end of day one," said Evans. "There have been some pretty extreme conditions and everyone has been trying to pick their way through - to a point it was a lottery - but of course you have to try and drive as quick as you can as well.

"Of course I'm happy to be here and you could always say you could have gone faster but would you have been here or not? I don't know. But it's a good end to what has been a difficult day."