Kalle Rovanpera closes the first stage of the Central European Rally as leader. The Toyota Racing Finn managed to win 4 out of the 6 races held today, leaving his opponents only crumbs, that is, the fight for second place.
The reigning world champion made perfect use of his perfect starting position, made even more effective by the rain, to widen his advantage over his first rivals, Elfyn Evans and Thierry Neuville, after taking the lead during the morning.
During the afternoon lap Kalle didn’t push as hard as he did in the morning, but it was enough to have over half a minute’s lead over the first of his rivals. Thierry Neuville. The Belgian increased his pace in the last 3 stages of today and this led him to overtake Elfyn Evans in the last stage of the day.
The Hyundai Motorsport driver also took his breath away to win SS6, literally beating the Welshman and taking the position from him. Evans is now 10″8 behind Neuville and this, for him, is very bad news considering that Rovanpera is headed towards another success.
If victory were to arrive and Evans did not go beyond third place, Rovanpera would win the second world title of his career already this weekend.
Behind the top three in the general classification of the event we find Ott Tanak, who did well to resist at the foot of the podium despite a defined bad feeling with his Ford Puma Rally1 Hybrid. The Estonian never had any ideas during the day, but everyone else – except for the top 3 – did worse than him.
The first of these is Takamoto Katsuta, fifth overall but almost a minute behind Tanak. However, the Japanese will have to be careful with the return of Sébastien Ogier. The 8-time world champion, after breaking a hoop in today’s first test, is making a full comeback and has moved to 9″1 behind him. Already in this test Ogier managed to overtake both Teemu Suninen – now seventh at 3″ 2 from the French champion – that Gregoire Munster, eighth overall.
Uphill race for Pierre-Louis Loubet, who made a mistake on today’s last stage, losing many seconds. It’s not over, because in the same test he had to change a wheel, finishing over 5 minutes behind Neuville, winner of the test.
As for WRC2, Emil Lindholm continues to lead the classification at the wheel of his Hyundai i20 N Rally2 ahead of two Skoda Fabia RS Rally2s, those of the Czech Erik Cais and the Frenchman Nicolas Ciamin. Fourth was Adrien Fourmaux, but he seems to have what it takes to fight for a position on the podium until the end.
The first stage of the Central European Rally ends here. The penultimate event of the 2023 WRC will resume tomorrow morning with Special Stage 9, the 15.72 kilometer Schärdinger Innviertel 1. The first car will enter the special at 08:15 Italian time.
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