It was clear even before the rally began that Rovanperä would suffer from his second place on the road on the dry gravel stages. Nevertheless, he hasn’t allowed the gap to the front to grow too large.
By the second remote service on Friday, Rovanperä was running fourth overall, 14.7 seconds behind rally leader Ott Tänak of Hyundai.
“Now the road is starting to get a bit rutted, so it feels more like the Portugal we’re used to,” Rovanperä noted.
“On the last two stages, the conditions started drying out, so it began to feel like a normal Portugal again. The car and everything else worked better in those conditions,” added the Toyota driver, who has already won the rally twice.
The drivers are facing a demanding day in northern Portugal, with three more stages to go after service. Rovanperä has a clear plan: the leaders must not get away.
“Today we have to aim for the best possible position to get a better road slot for Saturday. Now that the road is drying, it’s clear there’s a lot of cleaning. Even Elfyn (Evans), who’s first on the road, is losing quite a bit, and the road keeps getting faster behind us,” Rovanperä explained.
His closest challenger is Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville, who is just 8.3 seconds behind the Finn.
“Thierry is quite close behind. The drier it gets, the more he’ll benefit from his road position. It might be hard to keep him behind, but we’ll try to do the best we can,” Rovanperä planned.
“We now have two new stages that have never been run before. They’ll be more like the conditions on the first loop again. Based on the recce, they looked like they’ll clean a lot, because there’s a lot of loose gravel. We’ll see if we can find a few small things during service, but it’ll definitely be a challenging loop.”
