Elfyn Evans waited for the right moment to attack. He did it in the famous Special Stage 9 of the Chile Rally, the 28.31 kilometer Maria Las Cruces 1, inflicting very heavy gaps on all the rest of the contenders.
The leader of the event was very good at gritting his teeth in the two tests carried out this morning, saving the tires to have them in the best possible conditions and exploiting them in the most insidious, hardest and probably decisive test for the fate of the general classification. this weekend.
Evans stopped the clock in 17’04″3, ahead of Thierry Neuville, the first of his rivals, by 8 seconds. Almost all the riders had to deal with a light but constant rain that fell from the start of the special, but Evans – perhaps exhilarated by the conditions very similar to his home rally – pulled the classic rabbit out of the hat, winning the special and considerably increasing his lead over Kalle Rovanpera and Ott Tanak.
Now the Finn is 11″3 behind the Welshman, while Tanak is 17″4. However, Rovanpera and the Estonian remain in full battle for second position after overtaking the 2-time world champion in the previous race. Tanak will have to do everything he can to take second place today, so as to be able to nibble away more points than the world championship leader, Thierry Neuville.
Speaking of the Belgian, Neuville, precisely in this special, thanks to the second time and the contemporary eighth (24 seconds behind him) of Sami Pajari, rose to fourth position in the general classification. An excellent result after the difficulties encountered yesterday and, it seems, also during the morning. Neuville did not want to specify what went wrong, but he still managed to limit the damage and get to the foot of the podium.
An even more important result considering Sébastien Ogier’s retirement in the previous test after breaking his steering arm in the impact with a large stone left in his path. Sami Pajari thus completes the Top 5 but has a reassuring margin over Gregoire Munster, over 21 seconds.
Adrien Fourmaux managed to overtake Esapekka Lappi and is now seventh, just 4 tenths behind his Munster teammate who is sixth. The Frenchman made good use of Lappi’s difficulties, who ran almost the entire morning lap without the front bodywork after losing it in the first part of SS7.
Everything changes, once again, even in WRC2. And this change could have an incalculable value in the title fight. Oliver Solberg managed to overtake both the factory Citroen C3 Rally2s of Yohan Rossel and Nikolay Gryazin and now leads the class race. If Oliver were to win, then he would also take the title.
The morning lap of the second stage of the Chile Rally ends here. Now the drivers will be able to take advantage of the mid-day service to prepare the cars for the afternoon lap. The rally will resume with Special Stage 10, the 15.65 kilometer Pelun 2. The first car will enter testing at 8.07pm Italian time.
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