WRC | Rallye Monte-Carlo, SS2: Evans repeats himself. Neuville climbs to 2nd

Elfyn Evans and Toyota gave an encore by also winning the second special stage of the Rallye Monte-Carlo, the 25.19 kilometer Bayons/Breziers, ending the first of the 4 race days of the 2024 WRC prologue in the lead.

The Welshman, navigated by Scott Martin, also set the best time in SS2 with a time of 14'00″0, again taking advantage of the excellent starting position and a choice of tires (4 Softs used both in SS1 and in this test ) which rewarded him quite a bit compared to his opponents.

It is clear that Toyota thought of sending Evans on the run, hoping that the gap created over his rivals would be enough until Sunday, when, however, his rivals would have to have better tires than his to finish the race.

Evans beat the Hyundai i20 N Rally1 number 11, that of Thierry Neuville and Martijn Wydaeghe, second at 6″8. The Belgian crew remained quite close to the leader of the event until the penultimate sector, where the SuperSoft probably mounted started to overheat and slip too much, making the car less stable.

At the end of the test Neuville also complained of some problems with his car, but the result obtained in this test was enough to move up to second position in the general classification, just over 13 seconds behind Evans.

Things went worse for Ott Tanak, who continues to complain about accelerator problems, so much so that he stated that he was happy to have completed PS2. Tanak has lost not only second position – now in the hands of his teammate – but also third, which now sees Sébastien Ogier as the rightful owner.

The 8-time world champion continues to struggle due to an unfavorable starting position compared to his teammate. The asphalt on which he runs is much dirtier due to the passing of Evans, Neuville and Tanak and this seems to affect his driving quite a bit, despite his great experience on French roads.

Takamoto Katsuta, fifth in qualifying, seemed to be more competitive than in the previous test, but his delay from Evans was still 22 seconds. However, this was enough to do 8 tenths better than Adrien Fourmaux, first M-Sport Ford driver and the only driver capable of having Top 5 ambitions outside of the Toyota and Hyundai drivers.

The Frenchman lost the chance to pull ahead of Katsuta right in the last sector, where he paid for having chosen to mount 2 SuperSoft tires in this special. But his night in Monaco was anything but bad.

Gregoire Munster (M-Sport Ford) and Andreas Mikkelsen arrived at the end of the test to find themselves separated by just 3 tenths of a second in favor of the Dutchman. The latter pays for the lack of experience, while Mikkelsen, in addition to having a problem linked to the choice of engine mapping, seems to have not yet found the right rhythm with the Rally1s after several years with R5 and Rally2 cars.

WRC 2024 – Rallye Monte-Carlo – Ranking after PS2