TOYOTA GAZOO Racing World Rally Team’s five drivers lock out the top five positions following the first day of Rally Islas Canarias, with Kalle Rovanperä leading his team-mates after a clean sweep of stage wins.
Based on the island of Gran Canaria, the event is hosting the FIA World Rally Championship for the first time. Rovanperä has put a challenging start to his season behind him to set the pace on the thrilling asphalt roads – already posting the best time in Thursday morning’s shakedown. Following a well-attended ceremonial start in the island’s capital, Las Palmas, on Thursday evening, the rally then got underway for real on Friday morning.
With a trio of stage wins across the opening loop, Rovanperä built a lead of 17.8 seconds over fellow GR YARIS Rally1 driver Sébastien Ogier, with Elfyn Evans just 2.4s further back in third. After mid-day service, Rovanperä continued to lead the way with another three stage wins, increasing his advantage to 26.8s by the end of the day.
There has been little to separate eight-time world champion Ogier and current championship leader Evans so far, with 9.6s between them tonight.
Sami Pajari and Takamoto Katsuta both built their confidence and speed as the day progressed to join their team-mates in the top five. There are 10.7s between them, with another 7.3s back to the next best driver.
Quotes:
Juha Kankkunen (Deputy Team Principal)
“Everything went very well today. All our drivers were smiling and enjoying the driving on these very nice roads. I always had trust in Kalle: we know what he can do when everything is right, and here the car seems to be perfect for him. We know Seb and Elfyn are very good drivers, they were just not quite on Kalle’s level today. Sami has done a good day too, and for Taka we’ll try tonight to find a bit more from the car for him. The whole team has done an excellent job with the testing and preparation, and already in shakedown, the drivers were happy. It’s been a perfect day really. The rally is never finished until the last stage, but at the moment it looks very good.”
Elfyn Evans (Driver car 33)
“It’s definitely been a great day for the team today. They’ve done a really good job preparing for this rally. On a personal note, I’m maybe not entirely satisfied and could have done with finding a bit more confidence with the car and a few more seconds to fight with Kalle and Seb, who have been doing a great job. I’m not quite able to follow them at the moment but we’ll try a few changes tonight. Tomorrow’s stages are maybe a bit more abrasive, so it could be a bit more difficult for the tyres, and we have to see what the weather does too.”
Kalle Rovanperä (Driver car 69)
“I’m really happy with today. Everything came together well and it’s been a super day for the team overall. It seems we have done our preparation well and it meant we could just enjoy the driving and do a good job. The car is fast, I’m happy with the balance and I can drive it like I want, and our pacenotes have been good as well. Some sections of tomorrow’s stages will be a bit different in character to today, so we need to keep focused, see if we can make the car even better, and try to keep this up.”
Sébastien Ogier (Driver car 17)
“It’s been a very positive day for the whole team. To fill the top five places after day one is pretty impressive, so well done to our engineers and mechanics for the hard work, adapting to the new tyres as best as we can. Of course I’m never 100 per cent happy to be second but Kalle was really flying today and there was no way we could match his pace. I think we made some improvements this afternoon in terms of feeling and pace, and we still have some ideas for tomorrow.”
Takamoto Katsuta (Driver car 18)
“It’s been a very nice day for the team. It’s an amazing effort by everybody in preparing the car for our first time here with the WRC. Personally, I’m not completely happy with myself and seem to be missing something, so I just need to improve the speed a little bit. I’m not able to be quite as smooth as you need to be on this kind of rally. Already in the afternoon we changed a few things and it went in a better direction and hopefully we can find something more for tomorrow.”
Sami Pajari (Driver car 5)
“Today has been really good and the position we’re in as a team at the end of it is very nice. Personally, I was not completely happy in the morning but then stage-by-stage the feeling has been getting better. In the afternoon we found quite a nice flow and the times were even more competitive. Of course, when there’s still a bit of a gap to the front, then I’m always thinking about what we can improve so let’s see what we can do for tomorrow.”
End of day one (Friday):
1 Kalle Rovanperä/Jonne Halttunen (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) 1h10m31.8s
2 Sébastien Ogier/Vincent Landais (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +26.8s
3 Elfyn Evans/Scott Martin (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +36.4s
4 Sami Pajari/Marko Salminen (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +55.3s
5 Takamoto Katsuta/Aaron Johnston (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +1m06.0s
6 Thierry Neuville/Martijn Wydaeghe (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) +1m13.3s
7 Ott Tänak/Martin Järveoja (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) +1m14.1s
8 Adrien Fourmaux/Alexandre Coria (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) +1m14.8s
9 Grégoire Munster/Louis Louka (Ford Puma Rally1) +2m11.1s
10 Yohan Rossel/Arnaud Dunand (Citroën C3 Rally2) +2m50.7s
(Results as of 19:30 on Friday, for the latest results please visit www.wrc.com)
What's next?
Saturday is the longest day of the rally, with 124.08 competitive kilometres to be driven around the north of the island. The majority of this distance is tackled across a similar format to Friday with a loop of three stages run either side of mid-day service. A unique super special rounds out the day, running partly inside a basketball arena.
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