With five special stages now completed, the Finn currently sits in fifth place. So far, Rovanperä has been outpaced not only by the Hyundai drivers but also by his own teammates Sébastien Ogier and Takamoto Katsuta. Ogier and Katsuta moved ahead of the Finn just before the midday service.
Rovanperä is now 13.1 seconds behind rally leader Ott Tänak of Hyundai. The biggest time losses came on the final two stages of the morning loop.
“It definitely wasn’t an super easy morning. But I think everybody has had the same slick conditions this morning—more than we normally see here. So definitely lower grip, dealing with that. And of course, then getting the balance and everything working,” Rovanperä summed up his morning.
Rovanperä wasn’t particularly happy with his car during the morning loop. Some changes are therefore in store.
“We’ll do some small changes now. When it’s been so hard-packed, I don’t think the conditions will be so bad in the afternoon. Usually, we’ve seen quite a rough afternoon here, but I think now it’ll be quite okay. So let’s see what we do in the service, and it should be fine,” Rovanperä said with confidence.
“The conditions were quite unusual, as it had rained during recce and then they’ve compacted the stages with some sort of machine. The road surface is really hard. We’ve never had anything like this here in Portugal before,” Rovanperä remarked in surprise.
Rovanperä seemed to benefit from his starting position in the early morning, but during the final two stages of the loop, the cars running behind managed to post faster times than those at the front.
“It does seem like the stages have got a bit quicker, as everyone coming from behind posted strong times. So clearly the stages have cleaned up quite a bit,” Rovanperä assessed.
