The first of the 20 special stages of the Rally Latvia took place this evening and saw the protagonists whoever made the best choice of tyres – the Softs – which proved to be the best on the two tracks that made up the 11.13 kilometre PS1 Bikernieki Track.
The fastest overall time on the special was achieved by one of the drivers who chose to mount 4 Soft tyres, Kalle Rovanpera. The two-time world champion stopped the clock at 7’28″5, also proving to be the best Toyota Racing driver.
Sébastien Ogier, Elfyn Evans and Takamoto Katsuta all entered the session on mostly Soft tyres, but the joint-second fastest time overall went to Thierry Neuville.
The championship leader was 2.4s slower than Rovanpera, as was Sébastien Ogier. But the Hyundai Motorsport driver had with him (and mounted) a Hard on the rear, which certainly did not help him in his search for the time.
And yet the result came anyway, albeit in cohabitation with a recovered Ogier. Well done also to Martins Sesks: the home driver, making his debut on a Rally1 Hybrid, took the fourth time at 2″9 from Rovanpera. Unlike his teammates in M-Sport, the Latvian made the right choice of tyres and this rewarded him.
Closing the Top 5 is Elfyn Evans, 3″9 from Rovanpera and followed by his teammate Takamoto Katsuta at 1″7. Behind the Japanese are the drivers who instead focused on the Hards. Ott Tanak is seventh at 5″9 from the top and the author of a mistake that led him to hit a bale of hay that marked the course, but he is the first in a list that includes Adrien Fourmaux (M-Sport), Esapekka Lappi (Hyundai Motorsport) and Gregoire Munster who took part in the test with the wrong compounds.
In WRC2, Oliver Solberg fared significantly better than his rivals in the Skoda Fabia RS Rally2 of TokSport. The Norwegian was 7.7s ahead of the Citroen C3 Rally2 of Nikolay Gryazin, second, and the sister car of Gus Greensmith by 7.9s.
Rally Latvia will resume tomorrow morning with Special Stage 2, the 4.99-kilometer Milzkalne 1. The first car, the Hyundai i20 N Rally1 of Thierry Neuville and Martijn Wydaeghe, will enter the test at 9:00 Italian time.
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