Quotes:
Jari-Matti Latvala (Team Principal)
“It’s always great to be in Portugal: it’s a country that’s very passionate for motorsport and we feel that here every year. It’s a tough event because you need reliability and to plan the tyre strategy carefully with the drivers, but it’s been suiting us well previously and hopefully it will this year as well. Tonight in the first stage the important thing was not to wear the tyres too much because we need them tomorrow morning as well, but we don’t have to be too concerned about any time differences: you just need to trust your own strategy. For me, the most critical loop of stages is tomorrow afternoon. If you can get through that without any issues or problems and get all the cars back to service in one piece, then you are in a good place.”

Kalle Rovanperä (Driver car 69)
“It’s nice to be back here in Portugal. It’s been a successful event for us before but this year I have the feeling that it’s going to be a tight competition: we will do our best and try to bring as many points as we can for the team. Shakedown went quite well, straightaway the feeling with the car was quite good even though we had a small issue, which we managed to fix so everything was ready for the rally. The atmosphere is always great here and hopefully the first stage was a good show for the fans. But driving on asphalt with gravel tyres that we need for a long loop of stages tomorrow morning meant we needed to save them as much as we could.”

Elfyn Evans (Driver car 33)
“There’s a massive following for the rally here in Portugal, which is always nice to see and it’s great to get the weekend started. It was always going to be a tricky start tonight, with an asphalt stage and a lot of donuts when we have to carry the tyres onto tomorrow. So it’s difficult to enjoy it with that in the back of your mind: we just had to get through cleanly and be ready for tomorrow. It’s always a tough rally, especially the Friday with no mid-day service. The first pass is going to be difficult running early on the road, and tyre management is always quite key. We’ll try and have a clean run and maximise what we can out of it.”

Sébastien Ogier (Driver car 17)
“I’m happy to be back in Portugal: it’s a highlight of the season coming here, with so much support from the fans, and we’ll try to make a good show for them. It was a fine balance in the first stage because it’s important to save the tyres for tomorrow but we also couldn’t afford to lose too much time. Even if most of us know the stages here well, we never know exactly what to expect, especially on the second pass as it can be very rough in places. On paper it should be an interesting rally: we have a good start position tomorrow so let’s try to make the most of it.”

Takamoto Katsuta (Driver car 18)
“This rally is one of my favourites and I’ve been looking forward to the start: I will try to do my best and push from the beginning to the end. Shakedown seemed quite good, we tried a few different things and the car felt good, it’s working well, but tomorrow we will face some different conditions. The fans here have a lot of passion for the rally and it’s always nice to drive a super special with that energy. I was a bit surprised at how slippery it was in places and it was demanding for the tyres, but there were a lot of fans and I hope they enjoyed the show.”

End of day one (Thursday):
1 Thierry Neuville/Martijn Wydaeghe (Hyundai i20 N Rally1 HYBRID) 2m24.2s
2 Sébastien Ogier/Vincent Landais (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1 HYBRID) +0.6s
3 Ott Tänak/Martin Järveoja (Hyundai i20 N Rally1 HYBRID) +2.0s
4 Takamoto Katsuta/Aaron Johnston (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1 HYBRID) +2.0s
5 Kalle Rovanperä/Jonne Halttunen (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1 HYBRID) +2.4s
6 Adrien Fourmaux/Alexandre Coria (Ford Puma Rally1 HYBRID) +3.1s
7 Dani Sordo/Cándido Carrera (Hyundai i20 N Rally1 HYBRID) +4.1s
8 Elfyn Evans/Scott Martin (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1 HYBRID) +4.3s
9 Yohan Rossel/Arnaud Dunand (Citroën C3 Rally2) +4.7s
10 Pierre-Louis Loubet/Loris Pascaud (Škoda Fabia RS Rally2) +5.2s
(Results as of 20:00 on Thursday, for the latest results please visit www.wrc.com)

What's next?
The crews remain in central Portugal for Friday’s action, which totals 126.9 competitive kilometres. The Mortágua stage is now run at both the start and end of the day and is one of four tests to be driven twice around Arganil, which hosts a mid-day tyre fitting zone. Cars will only return north to the service park at the end of the day.