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Saturday afternoon got off to a good start for Ott Tänak, Hyundai’s other World Champion, who set the fastest time on SS13 between La Motte-Chalançon and Saint-Nazaire-le-Désert (27km). It was his second fastest time of the rally, after ES11 this morning, improving by over 20 seconds on the time set earlier in the morning by Grégoire Munster (Ford Puma) on the first run (ES10).
Thanks to this good performance, the Estonian, crowned in 2019, has regained 4th place in the overall standings which he had already occupied on Friday morning, after SS4. He thus overtook Kalle Rovanperä (Toyota), who really does not feel at ease on this Monte-Carlo, as he much prefers to slide on dirt or snow, but not on icy patches.
‘We had a good pace and fairly consistent [road] conditions. I had a better feeling. The [road] conditions have definitely changed too,’ said Tänak at the stop. As for Munster, he said he was ‘less comfortable than this morning. It wasn’t great, and my four soft tyres tended to overheat, especially the rear tyres’. The Luxemburg driver had set his first ever fastest stage time in WRC this morning.
In another change to the overall standings, Elfyn Evans (Toyota) moved back ahead of Adrien Fourmaux (Hyundai) to take second place, 18.4 seconds behind Sébastien Ogier, still the leader. ‘I didn’t have a good feeling on this stage, I was too cautious and I didn’t manage to attack enough,’ lamented the man from the north of France, but he was only 1.7 seconds behind Evans after SS13.
The battle continued as the stages progressed, with both drivers feeling more or less at ease. ‘Everything’s under control, I’m feeling better in the car,’ said Evans, who doesn’t usually give away too many details about his state of mind in the cockpit of a WRC car. And it’s hard to imagine the Welshman coming back on Ogier, who is still going strong as an old hand at Monte Carlo: ‘It was a good stage for me, in good conditions, with good grip. I tried to take it easy on the tyres. To win the rally, you have to be consistent’.
Another constraint from this afternoon is to take it easy on the tyres ahead of Sunday morning, when there will be, at best, ten points to take, including a maximum of five for the classification on the final day, and a maximum of five in the Power Stage. Finally, in the WRC2 category, Yohan Rossel (Citroën C3) now has a lead of more than three minutes over Eric Camilli, a former M-Sport competitor in WRC, who is still battling with Yohan’s brother Léo for second place of this class.
