TOYOTA GAZOO Racing World Rally Team driver Oliver Solberg has taken an early lead as the Rally de Portugal began with challenging gravel stages on Thursday.
One of the longest and most demanding rounds of the season, the rally started from the historic central city of Coimbra and took drivers straight into two full-length gravel tests to the north near Aveiro.
Times were close in the opening 15.08-kilometre stage from Águeda to Sever, with TGR-WRT’s championship leader Elfyn Evans just 0.1 seconds off the fastest time and Solberg only another 0.1s slower. Just five seconds covered a top seven that also included their team-mates Sami Pajari, Takamoto Katsuta and Sébastien Ogier.
The longer second stage of 20.24km from Sever to Albergaria provided more opportunity to make a difference. Solberg, bouncing back from the disappointment of a final-day retirement on the previous rally in the Canary Islands, set the fastest time to take over the rally lead.
After the traditional seaside super special in Figueira da Foz that rounded out the day, Solberg’s lead stands at 3.4 seconds over Hyundai driver Adrien Fourmaux.
Ogier was third-fastest in SS2 and shared the best time in SS3 with Evans to climb up to third overall, 7.2s from the lead.
Evans faced more road cleaning running first on the road in SS2 but is only 7.5s from the lead in fifth overall. For the first time in their WRC career, Pajari and Katsuta start the rally facing similar challenges running third and second on the road, and they sit sixth and eighth overall respectively.
TGR WRC Challenge Program driver Yuki Yamamoto made a solid start to his first gravel event of the season, placing 11th out of 43 Rally2 cars in SS1, before a spin in SS2 cost him around 20s.
Quotes:
Juha Kankkunen (Deputy Team Principal)
“It’s been interesting to start the rally with some proper gravel stages already on a Thursday afternoon. It has been quite an OK start, but everything is still very close between the drivers and there is obviously a very long way to go. We had been expecting that our competition would be much closer on this rally than in the Canaries, and it seems to be that way so far, so it should be an exciting rally ahead for everybody to follow.”
Elfyn Evans (Driver car 33)
“It’s been an OK start to the rally for us. Running first on the road, it was a bit of a surprise in the first stage that the drivers starting behind us didn’t go much faster. The second one seemed to be cleaning a bit more like we expected, but overall the feeling so far has not been as bad as when I’ve been in this situation in the past and the gaps are still relatively small. Still, there’s a very long way to go in this rally and tomorrow could be another story.”
Sébastien Ogier (Driver car 1)
“It hasn’t been the ideal start to the rally for us, but we managed to end the day without losing too much time. We really struggled in the first stage to commit and I could feel that I wasn’t fast, but we managed to make some changes to the car and have a better feeling for the second stage. It’s still early in the rally but we will need to try to find a better feeling and more pace for the rest of the weekend.”
Oliver Solberg (Driver car 99)
“It’s nice to be back on gravel and it’s been interesting to start the rally with proper stages already on a Thursday afternoon. It’s been a good, clean start for us – nothing special. It’s always good to be leading but it’s still so close and there’s several long days of rallying to come. Every day will be so different as well: tomorrow’s going to be a tough day for the tyres, and let’s see what the weather will bring for the rest of the weekend.”
Takamoto Katsuta (Driver car 18)
“It’s been a bit of a strange start to the rally. I expected to lose more time with our road position, but it hasn’t been so bad. At the same time, I haven’t had a great feeling behind the wheel so far. Tomorrow will be a much longer day and it won’t be easy like this, so we need to try to do some work with the car to find a better feeling. There’s still a long way to go, but so far it’s OK.”
Sami Pajari (Driver car 5)
“We’re still only at the very beginning of the rally, but it wasn’t the best start for us. We’re still in the fight, but somehow the feeling was a bit different and not as good as we had in the pre-event test and in the shakedown. So I’m not completely satisfied and hopefully we can work a bit with the car setup for tomorrow and be on the pace that we would like to be.”
End of day one (Thursday):
1 Oliver Solberg/Elliott Edmondson (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) 28m00.0s
2 Adrien Fourmaux/Alexandre Coria (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) +3.4s
3 Sébastien Ogier/Vincent Landais (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +7.2s
4 Thierry Neuville/Martijn Wydaeghe (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) +7.4s
5 Elfyn Evans/Scott Martin (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +7.5s
6 Sami Pajari/Marko Salminen (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +10.7s
7 Dani Sordo/Cándido Carrera (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) +11.7s
8 Takamoto Katsuta/Aaron Johnston (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +15.9s
9 Josh McErlean/Eoin Treacy (Ford Puma Rally1) +23.4s
10 Jon Armstrong/Shane Byrne (Ford Puma Rally1) +24.8s
(Results as of 18:40 on Thursday, for the latest results please visit www.wrc.com)
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