Joint championship leader Elfyn Evans was given the task of sweeping the track surface and opening the road through the 12.03km of the Lousã test. The Welshman took his punishment with good grace and carded a target time of 9min 10.6sec but ceded 5.3 seconds to Kalle Rovanperä and 5.6 to Ott Tänak.
Thierry Neuville admitted to being a little too careful to conserve his tyres on a stage where there was some hanging dust for the cars running down the order. Pierre-Louis Loubet and Dani Sordo took advantage of their start positions to set the fastest times with the Frenchman leading the Spaniard by three-tenths of a second after SS1.
Finland’s Teemu Suninen and Frenchman Adrien Fourmaux were the early pace-setters in the hotly-contested WRC2 category.
Four-minute intervals this morning for Rally1 cars.
Car 11. NEUVILLE/WYDAEGHE
“The feeling was good to be honest, not too bad, I was a bit too careful with the tyres in some of the
sections. I had a good run but there is a bit of dust in there, even with the four-minute gap, but it was on
the edge and is driveable.”
Car 69. ROVANPERÄ/HALTTUNEN
“It felt like a good stage. There was some dust in places hanging in the forest, not easy to push in the
dust, but all okay.”
Car 8. TÄNAK/JÄRVEOJA
“It’s a shaky ride at the moment. It feels a bit like a wooden horse. On the bedrock it’s a bit shaky.”
Car 33. EVANS/MARTIN
“Really difficult to be honest, especially these hairpins at the end. As we expected really.”
Car 6. SORDO/CARRERA
Second fastest time for the Spaniard. “It was a bit dusty in some places, I had to be careful with the hard
tyre. I feel really good with the car at the moment and the co-driver is doing an amazing job.”
Car 4. LAPPI/FERM
“All good. A clean stage just coming smartly through. It’s a narrow stage and you can lose a lot. A bit of
dust and I need to back off in some places. We have the four-minute gaps and it was driveable most of
the time.”
Car 18. KATSUTA/JOHNSTON
“Not so bad, last two years I am losing a lot of time here.” Issues with the voltage on the Toyota.
Car 7. LOUBET/LANDAIS
“Ahh, good start. It’s good. We have to continue but it’s a good start.”
Car 21. SOLBERG/EDMONDSON
Carded the target WRC2 time of 9min 22sec and beat Mikkelsen by 3.3 seconds and Greensmith by 1.1.
Car 23. SUNINEN/MARKKULA
The Finn ran three seconds quicker than Solberg and was the leader among the early WRC2 runners.