With gaps as laughable as those we have seen so far at the Rally Poland, it doesn’t take much to upset the general classification of the seventh event of the 2024 WRC and so it happened.
In Special Stage 13, the 18.50 kilometer Swietajno 2 which opened the afternoon lap, the main pursuer of Kalle Rovanpera – winner of the special – is no longer his teammate Elfyn Evans but Andreas Mikkelsen.
Evans, who had immediately appeared to be less than brilliant in the first sectors of the special, suffered delamination of the right rear tyre. The situation worsened in the last sector, where the Welshman took most of the almost 10 seconds of delay from the reference time obtained by Rovanpera.
This dropped Evans to third in the overall event standings, 9.3 seconds behind the leader. As a result, Andreas Mikkelsen moved up a position from third to second.
The duel between Rovanpera and the Norwegian from Hyundai Motorsport was very good: the two ended the race separated by just 1 tenth in favor of the reigning world champion. Between the two, now, in the general classification there are just 2″8.
Thierry Neuville also performed well, third overall and able to halve the gap that separated him from Martins Sesks. The Latvian was unable to repeat his good performance in the morning, while the Belgian changed pace. Now there are 8″7 between the two in favor of the debutant at the wheel of the only Rally1 without the aid of the hybrid, but the two longest special stages of the lap still need to be run.
Also noteworthy is the second retirement in two days for Ott Tanak. If yesterday’s accident came about due to an unfortunate accident (on SS2 the Estonian ended up hitting a deer that entered testing just moments before his i20 passed), today it was the team that decided to save the car and tires and have him return tomorrow to chase the points up for grabs from Super Sunday and the Power Stage.
Sami Pajari confirms his uncatchable status in WRC2 by also winning the class stage with just a tenth of an advantage over Oliver Solberg, who today returned much more convincing after a Friday well below his standards. Pajari now has 33″1 on the first of his pursuers, Robert Virves, and 35″6 on Oliver Solberg, who sees the possibility of moving up to second place having a delay of only 2″5 from the Estonian.
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