After the morning loop, Rovanperä is in second place, trailing his teammate and rally leader Elfyn Evans by just 2.2 seconds.
Despite the good pace, Rovanperä was far from satisfied with his morning performance.
“I was expecting it a bit on these kinds of roads. It’s not really optimal for my driving style. And when it’s not, then you always need to fight a bit more. Especially here, when it’s dry, when it’s like really hard road surface. I think just the grip level and the way you should follow the line and stuff is not really optimal for me,” Rovanperä lamented.
Rovanperä benefits from a good starting position as a part-time driver, but that advantage may diminish in the afternoon loop.
“I think it’s definitely going to be the guys who drove it in the morning who know the places a bit better now,” Rovanperä pointed out.
“Still, we need to try to do a good time there because it affects our morning time. So yeah, it’s going to be an interesting stage to do well,” Rovanperä added.
Rovanperä didn’t enjoy driving in the morning, and he’s now hoping for a change.
“Hopefully we can get a bit better feeling,” Rovanperä wished.
“We will change some things on the car, probably to make it a bit more comfortable, I hope, and then a bit faster. We just try to change something to give me a bit more support with the grip changes. Now it just feels like the car is too loose everywhere, and it’s not a very confident feeling,” Rovanperä concluded.
