After yesterday we changed some small things on the car and the feeling was even better than before, so now we have just been enjoying the driving. Still, there is one more day to go but hopefully everything continues to go well and he can maintain this same good feeling that he’s had up to this point.”
Even when he didn’t need to push so much this afternoon, he was still taking stage wins, so it seems to be coming easily to him. Now everything is clicking nicely: he’s very happy with the car and when he has this good feeling then he is able to attack very hard. We could see this kind of performance from him quite often last year, and I think it’s maybe just taken a little bit of time this season for things to be in the right place for him. “Today we have seen amazing speed from Kalle, and he’s been able to control it with no mistakes. Both Evans and his co-driver Scott Martin were cleared following routine medical checks last night and will now prepare for the next round in Sardinia. He faced the most slippery conditions opening the road for most of the day, but did post the second-best time in Lousada.Īfter the accident of Elfyn Evans in SS7 on Friday and an inspection of the damaged car, the team took the decision to retire it from the rally. Takamoto Katsuta was able to return to action under restart rules this morning following the technical issue that brought him to a halt on Friday. After the side-by-side Lousada super special stage that rounded out the day, Rovanperä’s lead stands at 57.5s. In the afternoon, Rovanperä came incredibly close to repeating that feat across the three mountain stages, missing out only by 0.7s in a rough second pass of Amarante. That became 52.4s at the end of the morning loop after he completed a hat-trick of stage wins in the much shorter Felgueiras. More caution was required in the subsequent Amarante – the longest stage of the season so far at 37.24 kilometres – but he still substantially increased his lead to 45.8s.
He more than doubled that advantage with a storming drive in the first stage of the day, going quickest by 12.8s in the classic Vieira do Minho test. Following a strong performance on Friday’s opening day from second on the road, Rovanperä came into the longest day of the rally with a lead of 10.8 seconds.
0 kommentar(er)
