While Toyota kept pace with the leaders on the early stages, road position began to work against the Toyota drivers on the final two stages of the loop.
Sébastien Ogier benefited slightly from a better road position than Elfyn Evans and Kalle Rovanperä. After five stages, the Frenchman sits third overall, 7.4 seconds behind rally leader Ott Tänak in the Hyundai.
Ogier wasn’t particularly pleased when he arrived at the first remote service.
“I think it improved a little bit through the loop. The first one was definitely the worst, where I felt straight away – like the first corner of the stage – that something was not right with the setup,” Ogier said of his early suspicions.
“We were way too soft. And then I struggled to be precise on such a very fast, demanding stage between the trees. So yeah, not really surprised with the time at the end,” he admitted candidly.
Ogier also felt the effects of a long break from gravel rallies.
“We discussed with the engineer what’s best for the afternoon, and I hope we will have a globally better feeling. But I think it’s been a very long time since I last drove on gravel, and maybe I’m also paying the price for not having done any development testing with these tyres,” Ogier reflected.
“I had a difficult test day two weeks ago – it was raining – so yeah, it made the start of the rally complicated. But that’s idle talk. We’ll try to fight.”
Elfyn Evans got his morning off to a fairly promising start, but soon the Welshman began to suffer from his road-sweeping role. At remote service, he was sixth overall, 21.7 seconds off Tänak’s pace.
“I think the morning started pretty okay on the first couple of stages. The time loss to the others wasn’t too bad, let’s say. At least the conditions seemed quite stable. But now, on these last two, in quite difficult conditions, we’ve been struggling quite a bit,” Evans summarised.
Evans was clear on his plan for the afternoon: do what he can.
“Well, I think we’ve been lucky in the sense that the conditions were a bit favourable on the first two. It just means we probably lost a bit less than we would have if it was fully dry. So we have to take that as a positive. And yeah, just do what we can this afternoon”
