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Kalle Rovanperä (Toyota), the two-time Finnish World Champion, was wide awake on Friday morning and won the day’s first special stage, between Saint-Maurice and Aubessagne (SS4, 18.6 km), in the Hautes-Alpes, with a time of 11’38”3. As a direct consequence of this tricky stage, another Toyota driver, Elfyn Evans, took the lead of the 93rd Rallye Monte-Carlo from reigning world champion Thierry Neuville (Hyundai) by just eight-tenths of a second.
“I may have made the best tire choice for these conditions,” said Rovanperä at the end of the stage. “The beginning was quite icy and at the end, the road was dirty,” added the young Finn. He took advantage of his starting position, several minutes after Neuville and Evans, to set a significant time, on a road that was increasingly dirty but also increasingly dry. And he made a fine comeback in the overall standings, in just ten minutes. Rovanperä is still 6th, but 22 seconds only behind the leader, instead of 43 seconds on Thursday night when he went to bed.
Two other drivers took advantage of the rising sun and more favourable road conditions by the minute: Luxembourg’s Grégoire Munster (Ford Puma) and another Finn, the talented Sami Pajari (Toyota), last year’s WRC2 champion. They took 2nd and 3rd places on SS4, ahead of all the other competitors, starting with Ott Tänak (Hyundai), in much better form than on Thursday evening, and the two Frenchmen, Adrien Fourmaux (Hyundai) and Sébastien Ogier (Toyota).
“I had a clean stage, I had a lot of fun with the car, I enjoyed myself. I just had to guess where the ice was melting,” Fourmaux analyzed at the stop. “The conditions were tricky, it was more like a Monte Carlo, with ice in places, than last night with all the mud on the road,” admitted Ogier, still clinging on to 3rd place behind Evans and Neuville, and just four seconds behind the Welsh leader.
In WRC2, the battle was on again, with Oliver Solberg (Toyota Yaris Rally2) setting his second fastest time in a row, in the category, ahead of Russian-Bulgarian Nikolay Gryazin (Skoda Fabia RS). He also managed a Top 4 overall on this stage, less than five seconds behind Rovanperä, taking advantage of better road conditions, almost an hour after the leaders had set off.
With the top three within 4 seconds of each other and the top six grouped in 22 seconds, Day 2 of the rally is shaping up to be a great one. But SS5 has been cancelled after several spectators had to be rescued on the stage. The third stage of the morning loop, SS6, remains scheduled for the end of the morning, between La Bréole and Selonnet (18.31km).
