Today’s afternoon lap at the Chile Rally was feared due to the ruined and treacherous surface. Instead, at least until the end of SS11 and with one race still to go, the real problem for the crews was the fog.
If SS10 was something of a formality, the 25.64 kilometer SS11 Lota 2 was much more of a challenge. Fog descended heavily on the route and made the challenge almost impossible for several riders.
The winner was Thierry Neuville, author of the best time in 15’57″1 and 5 seconds faster than Kalle Rovanpera. Thanks to this result, the Belgian Hyundai Motorsport driver got very close to his teammate Ott Tanak and, therefore, in third place in the general classification.
Now there are 14″2 in favor of the Estonian between the two teammates when there is still one test left at the end of today’s stage. It will be difficult for Neuville to close the entire gap, but if the fog were to appear again in the next stage, then everything would be more than open.
Kalle Rovanpera’s second half should not be underestimated. The 2-time world champion, in fact, was good at navigating even more extreme conditions than others and, thanks to the simultaneous difficulty encountered by Elfyn Evans, he became the new leader of the Chile Rally.
Evans did 19 seconds worse than Rovanpera, squandering all the advantage built up to the previous test. Now the Finn has a 5″5 advantage over his Welsh teammate.
Sami Pajari is also in great difficulty. As a rookie, in just one race, he lost two positions in the general classification in favor of the Ford Puma Rally1 Hybrid of Adrien Fourmaux – back in the Top 5 after yesterday’s penalty – and Gregoire Munster.
Esapekka Lappi was also in difficulty, arriving early at Time Control and seeing a 2 minute penalty imposed on his race time, but remaining in eighth place.
Disaster instead for Oliver Solberg. Just as he seemed to be on his way to winning the event and the WRC2 title, he was forced to stop to change a wheel, thus losing the category leadership and slipping to fifth place. Nikolay Gryazin returned to the lead with the Citroen C3 Rally2 with a 16″4 advantage over the first Skoda Fabia RS Rally2, which has now become that of Gus Greensmith. Third place for Yohan Rossel, 15 seconds behind in the second place.
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