The rain was expected in this second stage of the Croatian Rally and it arrived on time. The afternoon lap opened under water, which made the 15.72 kilometer Special Stage 13 Smerovisce – Grdanjci 2 even more treacherous, so much so that the leader of the general classification immediately changed.
Elfyn Evans won the test by choosing the right tires to tackle the special, while Thierry Neuville – like the other Hyundais (so it's easy to think of a strategy decided by the team), but it's little consolation for him – didn't do the same , finding themselves navigating on wet asphalt.
Evans set the fastest time in 10'27″7, beating teammate Sébastien Ogier by 1 second and Neuville by 6″7. This was the gap that allowed the Toyota driver not only to make up the entire gap to the Belgian, but also to overtake him and take the lead in the fourth event of the season with a 2 second lead.
The margin between the two is slim and Neuville will be able to try to patch things up in the next tests, provided however that he chooses the right tires for the situation and the conditions of the asphalt he will find. In this test Neuville was however good at patching up a situation that was anything but simple, still pushing hard to lose as little time as possible and have the chance to recover in the next special stages.
In SS13 we also saw Takamoto Katsuta for the first time, fourth at 1″1 from Neuville's time, after a subdued first half of the race to say the least. The other two Hyundai i20 N Rally1s did poorly, with Andreas Mikkelsen fifth at 12 “9 from Evans and even ahead of Ott Tanak, sixth, 15 seconds behind the Welshman.
Difficult test also for Adrien Fourmaux who, like the Hyundais, made the wrong choice of tires (complaining at the end of the test, also implying the team's responsibility in this regard) not going beyond the seventh fastest time at 15.5 seconds from the fastest time. internship reference.
Nikolay Gryazin remains leader of the WRC2 despite a sub-standard performance offered so far this weekend. The Russian from Citroen Racing saw several seconds nibbled away by teammate Yohan Rossel, although the gap between the two is still around 40 seconds.
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