The Estonian set the fastest times on the opening two stages of the day and claimed the early lead. However, over the final two tests of the loop, Tänak began to struggle, particularly in comparison to his Hyundai team-mate Adrien Fourmaux.
After five special stages, Tänak’s lead over Fourmaux stands at just 0.2 seconds.
“The first two stages were actually working quite well. I was more or less happy in the car and could drive my own rhythm,” Tänak said.
“But the last two have actually been quite a terrible struggle, to be honest. I don’t know if the characteristics changed, but somehow we had huge understeer straight away from the third stage. It’s been very difficult to push.”
Tänak admitted that his tyre choice for the final stage of the loop had backfired.
“I used the hard tyres for the last stage, but it was not a good plan,” he commented.
Friday’s schedule includes six more gravel stages. The morning stages will be repeated in the afternoon before the next remote service.
“The conditions will probably change, and obviously the weather will just get warmer and hotter. So it will clearly be very different this afternoon,” Tänak predicted.
“In the morning, the roads were in quite good shape, to be honest. But there are still lots of cars to come, so let’s see how much they destroy the road.”
