The reigning two-time world champion ran second on the road on Portugal’s dry gravel stages. Championship leader Elfyn Evans suffered the most from sweeping duties, but Rovanperä didn’t fare much better. At the end of Friday, Rovanperä sits fourth in the overall standings.
While the gap to the rally leader is nearly half a minute, Rovanperä trails third-placed teammate Takamoto Katsuta by just 1.2 seconds. On Saturday, he’ll have a significantly better road position to launch his attack.
“To be completely honest, I have to be satisfied. If you look at how much Elfyn has lost at the front, you can pretty much judge the gaps by road order. So, all in all, it was a good day,” Rovanperä said.
“We’ll go for a good day tomorrow. Hopefully the road position will help and the pace will naturally improve. The stages tomorrow are different, and it’s hard to decide which tyres to take for the morning. Let’s hope we make the right call.”
After the day’s final stage, Rovanperä opened up about the sheer physical and mental toll the rally schedule takes on drivers. The workload on long days is brutal.
“I think we spent 15 hours in a bad sauna today. Just a couple of ten-minute breaks to grab something to eat. You can manage it, sure. But with another early wake-up tomorrow, I really wonder – does this even make sense? There’s a lot of talk about road safety during rallies, but then we end up driving transfers while completely exhausted all weekend. It can be done, of course, but does it make sense” Rovanperä reflected.
Despite the near 30-second deficit to the lead, Rovanperä has shown time and again on gravel rallies that his pace improves when road position does.
“Sure, we’ve made up gaps before. But there’s no strange weather forecast for tomorrow, so I think the gaps will be pretty small,” the Finn cautioned.
