TOYOTA GAZOO Racing World Rally Team has made a positive start to the only pure winter round of the FIA World Rally Championship with Elfyn Evans claiming the early lead at Rally Sweden ahead of team-mate Kalle Rovanperä.
Car 33 (Elfyn Evans, Scott Martin)
Always one of the fastest rounds of the season, this year’s Rally Sweden looks set to be spectacular with temperatures well below freezing forming a solid ice base for the special studded tyres to bite into, and high snowbanks lining the road that can help the drivers to carry even more speed through corners.
The usual pre-event shakedown took place on Thursday morning in the host city of Umeå, following a new course along the bank of the Ume River. Evans, running first on the road as the leading championship contender, set the fastest time after the first runs and finished up third quickest after three passes, just ahead of Rovanperä.
This was followed in the evening by the opening competitive stage, the Umeå Sprint on the edge of the city: a 5.16-kilometre stage starting on fast forest roads and finishing in a more technical spectator arena. Evans led the way to record the best time, 0.5 seconds quicker than both Rovanperä and Ott Tänak (Hyundai). Takamoto Katsuta and Sami Pajari were just over five seconds back in sixth and seventh places respectively.
Quotes:
Jari-Matti Latvala (Team Principal)
“It’s always great for us to be here in Sweden starting this rally and especially with the nice conditions for rallying that we have this week. When you have minus temperatures, big snowbanks, the sun is shining and you’re pushing to the limits, it’s a great feeling as a driver. We had a good start tonight but it’s going to be interesting to see tomorrow how the roads are evolving, and how the pace is evolving with the new Hankook tyres when the road is cleaning up. With Elfyn opening the road, hopefully we have a cold night and the conditions stay consistent for everyone, but the good thing is that our drivers are spread nicely through the order and we hope to make a good start whatever the situation is.”Elfyn Evans (Driver car 33)
“The conditions look brilliant out on the stages, with a good ice base and big snowbanks – you couldn’t really hope for much better. This first stage was a pretty solid start: the braking points can be difficult to find in the dark and the grip was difficult to judge, but it was all OK. It might be that some stages work in our favour opening the road tomorrow, and others like the first stage where there’s a bit more loose snow on the ground could cost us a bit more, but let’s see how it goes.”Kalle Rovanperä (Driver car 69)
“We’re expecting to have a nice winter rally this weekend and I’m really excited for that. The conditions looked really nice on the stages during the recce, better than usual with a good layer of ice. If it’s like it was in this first stage tonight, it could be good to be near the front of the road order. Again we have a new tyre for this surface so there will be many things to learn. It’s a rally where you need to push a lot, so hopefully we have a good feeling and can have a great event.”Takamoto Katsuta (Driver car 18)
“It’s nice to be back on snow and the conditions are looking very good, with thick ice and not too much gravel coming through. Still, we know that the second pass of stages could be tricky, especially as we are learning about the new tyres. I was surprised how low the grip was on this first stage, but tomorrow’s stages might be quite different. The car is good and my feeling is good so I’m quite confident.”Sami Pajari (Driver car 5)
“Normally I like winter rallies with proper winter conditions like we have here this week: it seems to be nice and icy. We need to see how it develops but I’m really looking forward to the weekend. For me the grip was changing quite a lot in the first stage so it wasn’t easy to find the flow, but it was good to get through it cleanly before the rally starts properly tomorrow. In general I’m quite happy and confident with the car and just aiming to have a good time.”
End of day one (Thursday):
1 Elfyn Evans/Scott Martin (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) 3m21.6s
2 Kalle Rovanperä/Jonne Halttunen (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +0.5s
3 Ott Tänak/Martin Järveoja (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) +0.5s
4 Adrien Fourmaux/Alexandre Coria (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) +1.2s
5 Thierry Neuville/Martijn Wydaeghe (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) +3.7s
6 Takamoto Katsuta/Aaron Johnston (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +5.4s
7 Sami Pajari/Marko Salminen (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +5.6s
8 Josh McErlean/Eoin Treacy (Ford Puma Rally1) +7.5s
9 Grégoire Munster/Louis Louka (Ford Puma Rally1) +10.5s
10 Mārtiņš Sesks/Renārs Francis (Ford Puma Rally1) +11.0s
(Results as of 18:45 on Thursday, for the latest results please visit www.wrc.com)
What’s next?
Friday is the longest day of the rally featuring 124.32 competitive kilometres driven mostly to the north of Umeå. A loop of three stages is run twice either side of mid-day service, consisting of the familiar Bygdsiljum test and the all-new Andersvattnet and Bäck stages. Another pass of the Umeå Sprint rounds out the day.
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