Kalle Rovanperä has not made any mistakes, but his advantage of more than a minute over his closest rival has evaporated. An unfortunate puncture on SS11 has led Rally Croatia to an unexpected restart that puts the swords high with eight stages to go. In fact, the gap between Rovanperä and Ott Tänak has been reduced to 16.8 seconds in a day that began with Oliver Solberg accident and with a new sanction for Thierry Neuville that takes him away from the podium in the third round of the WRC.
If between the morning and afternoon loop on Friday the leader Rovanperä found himself with a good mattress due to the sanction of Thierry Neuville, the situation was repeated before the start of today’s stage. A new sanction for the Hyundai driver, in this case one minute for ostensibly speeding on several links and an additional ten seconds for being late for the SS9 time control. Thus, the first stage of the rally left a scratch for Elfyn Evans and a reinforced lead of 1 minute and 23 seconds from Rovaperä, now over Ott Tänak.
Nevertheless, the true protagonist of the SS9 was Oliver Solberg after suffering a strong run off the track with his Hyundai i20 N Rally1. As a result of the impact and the heat present in the area near the exhaust, the Swedish’s ‘Rally1’ caught firealthough the quick intervention of Solberg and his co-driver prevented the car from going up in flames. The section was neutralized and equitable times were distributed among the pilots who had not passed the point of the incident. Before giving an authentic ‘recital’ of spinning tops, Esapekka Lappi scored the scratch in SS10.
A section that Kalle Rovanperä and Ott Tänak completed with wet tires in the face of the difficult situations that awaited them on SS11. The move turned out much better for the Hyundai driver, since Ott Tänak scored the scratch on the wet asphalt of SS11 while Kalle Rovanperä had a puncture that almost put the rally fight back at square one. The Toyota driver lost almost a minute and saw how his advantage over Tänak was reduced to 18.2 seconds.
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Although SS12 served for Thierry Neuville to score a new scratch, the repeated sanctions that the Belgian received have left him far from the podium positions and with the feeling of having missed a golden opportunity. In fact, Neuville would be the outstanding leader of the rally if he had not received these penalties, but the reality is that he occupies fourth position, 1 minute and 24 seconds behind the leader and 26.2 seconds off the podium, which is closed by Craig Breen. In front, Kalle Rovanperä heads into the final eight stages of the event with a lead of 16.8 seconds over Ott Tänak.
Classification after SS12 of the 2nd Rally of Croatia
Rally Croatia continues this Saturday (3:04 p.m.) with the dispute of the second part of the second stage of the event. Pilots and co-pilots will dispute 58.49 kilometers against the clock on this second day.
Photos: Toyota Gazoo Racing / Hyundai Motorsport