TOYOTA GAZOO Racing World Rally Team continues to have two cars involved in a thrillingly close fight for victory with one day of the Croatia Rally remaining.
On the second day of the rally, crews faced another two loops of four stages around the Croatian capital city Zagreb, separated by mid-day service. With rain forecast, tyre strategy would prove a key topic: all cars in the top category took wet tyres as part of their package for the morning, although the weather would ultimately stay dry through the first loop.
Evans began the day tied for the rally lead with Thierry Neuville (Hyundai), with Ogier just 6.6 seconds away in third. Things remained close through the morning, with 4.7s separating Neuville and Evans at mid-day service and Ogier remaining 6.6s further back having scored a stage win in SS10.
For the afternoon the TGR-WRT trio took a package of soft and wet tyres while others also fitted hard-compound rubber. This strategy worked well when rain hit in the first stage of the afternoon, which Evans won by 1s over Ogier to take the rally lead from Neuville. His rival would respond and regain the advantage in the following test, but just 4.9s separate the two at the end of the day. Ogier is 6.7s further back in third.
Takamoto Katsuta demonstrated improved pace and confidence on day two to set several top-four stage times – including on SS10 where he was one of four drivers remarkably covered by just 0.4s across 20.77 kilometres. He remains in sixth position overall.
Quotes:
Jari-Matti Latvala (Team Principal)
“We’ve seen a very exciting fight for the lead today. The gaps between the top three drivers have been incredibly small for such a demanding rally. Of course, we were hoping to be on top at the end of the day, and our drivers did a very good job, but Neuville was just slightly quicker. Everyone was expecting rain today and the tyre choices were reflecting this. We needed to think about the championship, and although we couldn’t be the fastest today, we are on for very good points with second and third positions after Saturday. And with the right choices in the morning, I’m sure that we will still have a chance to fight for the victory tomorrow.”
Elfyn Evans (Driver car 33)
“It’s been a good day and good fun behind the wheel. The margins have been very tight here and we just couldn’t quite match Thierry, who was very fast all day. We had a good start to the afternoon to take the lead – we had the right tyre choice for that stage especially. After that, I think it’s hard to say what the best choice was, as the feeling was pretty good in the car. We just unfortunately fell short at the end of the day. There will be another difficult tyre choice to make to cover the whole final day but we’ll try to make good decisions and give it our best.”
Sébastien Ogier (Driver car 17)
“Overall it’s been a good day for me in the car. Everyone was expecting rain today and we made some changes to the car anticipating that, and I didn’t quite feel as comfortable as yesterday. We had a few drops of rain to start the afternoon and we had a tyre choice that suited these conditions, so we managed to get back a little bit of time. Unfortunately, it kind of balanced out over the rest of the loop. Still, it’s been a positive day, we were just missing something to make the difference in this close fight. It's not over yet, and we will keep pushing until the end – also to help the team score the maximum points.”
Takamoto Katsuta (Driver car 18)
“For sure, today was much better than yesterday, so I’m feeling happier tonight. I felt good in the car and it’s getting better and better all the time. I was more competitive in some stages and just missing a bit of commitment in others. It’s easier to see now where I’m losing time compared to the top three and why, but I wasn’t taking huge risks. I think the team did a very good job with the tyre choices because it was difficult to get it right for every stage. Tomorrow I’ll try to push myself and to take some extra points for myself and the team.”
End of day two (Saturday):
1 Thierry Neuville/Martijn Wydaeghe (Hyundai i20 N Rally1 HYBRID) 2h09m46.0s
2 Elfyn Evans/Scott Martin (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1 HYBRID) +4.9s
3 Sébastien Ogier/Vincent Landais (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1 HYBRID) +11.6s
4 Ott Tänak/Martin Järveoja (Hyundai i20 N Rally1 HYBRID) +1m15.5s
5 Adrien Fourmaux/Alexandre Coria (Ford Puma Rally1 HYBRID) +1m35.4s
6 Takamoto Katsuta/Aaron Johnston (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1 HYBRID) +2m14.2s
7 Andreas Mikkelsen/Torstein Eriksen (Hyundai i20 N Rally1 HYBRID) +4m00.8s
8 Grégoire Munster/Louis Louka (Ford Puma Rally1 HYBRID) +4m56.3s
9 Nikolay Gryazin/Konstantin Aleksandrov (Citroën C3 Rally2) +7m41.4s
10 Yohan Rossel/Arnaud Dunand (Citroën C3 Rally2) +8m20.9s
(Results as of 18:45 on Saturday, for the latest results please visit www.wrc.com)
What's next?
As in previous years in Croatia, the final day of action takes place to the north of Zagreb where a pair of stages will be run twice, forming 54.78 competitive kilometres. The Zagorska Sela – Kumrovec test hosts the rally-ending Power Stage for the fourth year in succession.
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