Rovanpera pounces to lead Rally de Portugal after penultimate day

His Toyota Gazoo Racing team-mate – Elfyn Evans – is still in contention to secure a much-needed first win of the 2022 campaign, though, as the pair are only separated by 5.7 seconds with five Sunday stages to run. Takamoto Katsuta ensured it was a dream end to the day for the Japanese team as he provisionally rounds out the top three positions.

Evans started day two in the best possible fashion, recording a scratch time on ‘Vieira do Minho’ to extend his overnight lead from 13.6 second to 14.9 seconds over Rovanpera.

The Finn lost momentum by “running wide here and there”, although he was still a cut above Hyundai Motorsport’s Dani Sordo who was well down the road in third place but only four seconds up on Katsuta.

M-Sport Ford’s Pierre-Louis Loubet survived a spin to hold on to fourth from the Hyundai I20 N of Thierry Neuville that was wearing three soft Pirelli tyres and one hard compound shoe. Craig Breen ran with hard tyres on the front of his Puma Rally1 and complained of having zero feeling as was reflected in his time.

Rovanpera responded on the next stage to trim Evan’s buffer to 10.2 seconds, although the tyres on the back of his Yaris paid a heavy price. “I think Elfyn has better tyres, but I am sliding a lot and it’s not easy to be clean,” he said.

Katsuta continued to turn the heat up on Sordo by going third fastest to move to within 1.3 seconds of the WRC veteran even though he had “two moments” and “decided to back off”. Neuville and Loubet traded places as the former battled to keep his Puma Rally1 car on the clean line on hard tyres – a headache shared by Breen.

Still, it could have been worse. After re-joining under Super Rally rules, the two Sebastiens – Loeb and Ogier – suffered retirement for a second day in a row. After losing all power, Loeb rebooted his car in an attempt to bring it back to life but it was a fruitless exercise. Ogier, meanwhile, slid off the road on a sweeping left bend and his GR Yaris Rally1 car ended up down a ditch.

Clearly unfazed by Rovanpera’s advances, Evans punched in another fastest time of the weekend to put 18.4 seconds between the pair before returning to service. Both pawed for traction – especially in the sandy sections – but Rovanpera was handicapped most, as he explained. “It didn't work out so well with the tyres. We had two used ones from yesterday and it was already on the limit,” he said.

Behind them, Katusuta’s calm and collected approach was starting to pay dividends as he vaulted past Sordo. “Taka is driving very well – he is doing amazing stages – so he deserves it,” was the honest view of Rally1 debutant, Sordo.

On hard tyres – “the wrong tyre choice” – Loubet’s chance of reeling in Neuville were ebbing away as the gap more than doubled to 43.8 seconds. Breen’s tale of woe continued, too, with the dust that ingressed his car’s cockpit on Friday returning to haunt him.

“Really bad,” he said after getting caught in the dirt of team-mate Adrien Fourmaux as a result of the Frenchman stopping to replace a rear left wheel and resuming just in front of the Irishman. “I was having to slow down in so many places. That was a disaster to be honest,” added Breen.

The game of tit-for-tat continued into the afternoon loop’s first stage as Evans lost 1.9 seconds to Rovanpera who insisted his approach was “nothing too crazy”. His Toyota team-mate knew otherwise, though. “That was a pretty good run from Kalle,” said last year’s WRC runner-up.

Behind them, Katsuta stayed in third, his cause helped by Sordo who resorted to overdriving his I20 N supermini in his desperation to keep his hopes of a podium result alive.

There was little else in the way of drama at the end of the 22 kilometres of ‘Vieira do Minho’ save for Gus Greensmith. He unearthed a hard object in a soft bank with the right-rear wheel on his Puma Rally1 car and was punished with a soft puncture. He would subsequently bow out on the next stage.

With a head of steam built up, Rovanpera made it back-to-back scratch times to inch ever closer to his team-mate, the deficit now totalling just under 10 seconds. Katsuta, meanwhile, cemented third place. Then, on the penultimate Saturday stage, Rally de Portugal delivered another moment of madness.

Rovanpera moved to the top of the timesheets by four seconds when Evans – the last of the Rally1 runners – was handicapped considerably by a heavy rain shower. “I think we had the worst of it in here and it was raining very heavily for us,” said Evans.

“I had a very close moment with a tree near the start which wasn’t nice, so that didn’t help.” Indeed, every crew suffered in the muddier conditions at some point through the 37 kilometres of ‘Amarante’.

To add to the challenge, Katsuta was unsettled by a burning smell inside his car; the windscreen wipers on Loubet’s Puma Rally1 stopped working altogether; and in those sections untouched by the rain Breen’s speed was affected by hanging dust clouds.

On the final stage of the day, Evans surrendered 1.7 seconds to Rovanpera, while Sordo inched up on Katsuta - the difference now equalling 5.7 seconds. With the margins so tight, Evans is not giving up on an important first win of 2022 just yet.

"We could have done a bit more in places, but that's how it is," he said at the end of play on Saturday. "The rain didn't help us in the long one and Kalle has driven really well. That's how it is - we have to keep the pressure on and see what's possible."