Evans claimed victory with a comfortable with a 28.3s advantage over Hyundai's Dani Sordo while reigning champion Sebastien Ogier finished almost a minute and 30 seconds back in third.

On Saturday evening, the Welshman watched his lead slashed by a third when the last man standing for Hyundai, Sordo, scorched through the Porto superspecial to keep in contention.

Nevertheless, at the final morning restart, the momentum swung firmly behind Evans, who all-but doubled his lead from 10.7 seconds to 20.3s and claimed his third stage win of the event.

Evans would claim two more stage wins through the day, the only notch missing from his belt being that of the fabled Fafe stage, which was run twice at the end of each loop of stages and closed the rally with its points-scoring powerstage.

Fafe provides the iconic moment of the WRC’s Portuguese classic, when cars leap over a narrow crest that is lined with spectators that have returned for for first time this year.

On the morning pass through Fafe it was the Hyundai of Thierry Neuville, which went fastest of all by 4.5s over the 11.18km stage, shading his teammate Ott Tanak with Evans finishing third.

Both Neuville and Tanak had retired from the event after knocking the right-rear corners off their respective i20 WRCs, but returned to the fray to try and claim maximum points from the powerstage shootout in a bid to salvage their hopes of challenging for this year’s drivers’ title.

Tanak had gone so far as to dispense with carrying any spare tyres in order to save weight and even switched from a full-face helmet to an open-face model in his bid to shed every gram of excess baggage.

Neuville’s exit on Friday had given him the luxury of saving five soft tyres and he had them all aboard, trundling through the other stages to preserve them, while the only other man to have conserved a full set of soft rubber was Toyota’s championship leader Ogier.

Having climbed from eighth to third on Saturday, Ogier could afford to go easily on Sunday morning with only his junior teammate Takamoto Katsuta in a position to challenge.

With two wins from the three rallies held prior to Portugal, the seven-time champion could afford to be relatively sanguine about Evans’s first overall win of the year and instead chose to focus on upsetting Tanak and Neuville’s ambitions for the powerstage.

When it came to the closing shootout, Tanak bested his Belgian teammate by 1.6s as ample reward for his diligent weight saving. Ogier claimed the points for third-fastest time with his teammates Kalle Rovanpera and Evans scooping the last of the bonus points.

Runner-up Sordo had nothing left in his tyres for the powerstage. His second-place finish overall remained another commendable performance from the Spanish veteran, but Hyundai’s deficit to Toyota in the manufacturers’ standings, which it prioritises over drivers’ titles, has now opened to a yawning 37 points.

Sébastien Ogier, Julien Ingrassia, Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT Toyota Yaris WRC

Photo by: Toyota Racing

Ogier now leads Evans by two points in the drivers’ championship, with Neuville 20 points further back and Tanak a further 12 points in arrears.

In WRC2, it was the second win in two appearances for former WRC rally winner Esapekka Lappi.

The Finn beat his childhood friend and former M-Sport teammate Teemu Suninen’s Ford Fiesta into second place, with defending champion Mads Ostberg fighting back in his Citroen to complete the podium after a difficult weekend.

In WRC3, a dramatic late bid by Kajetan Kajetanowicz saw his Skoda pip the Citroen of longtime leader Yoann Rossel for victory on the final morning’s stages. Britain’s Chris Ingram completed the podium in his Skoda.

A brief 10-day pause will be followed by Rally Italy and another all-gravel outing for the teams, starting on June 3.

Results

Overnight leader Tanak had begun to build a considerable advantage through Saturday’s stages, dominating the morning loop for Hyundai and continuing to stretch his advantage through the same stages in the afternoon.

Tanak set the fastest time on the second stage after the break, thereby claiming the 250th stage win of his career, which handed the 2019 world champion an overall lead of 22.4 seconds over Evans.

But on his second pass through the 37.92km Amarante stage, the Estonian broke the right rear suspension of his Hyundai i20 WRC and was forced to pull to the side of the road after attempting to three-wheel his way to the finish.

This drama put Evans in a strong position as the field headed to a day-ending superspecial on the streets of Porto, having gradually pulled out a lead of 16.7s over early leader Dani Sordo’s Hyundai in second place.

Ott Tänak, Martin Järveoja, Hyundai Motorsport Hyundai i20 Coupe WRC

Photo by: Austral / Hyundai Motorsport

The Spanish veteran also had some dramas to contend with when a starter motor problem obliged him to sit nervously with the engine running at all times.

Despite this hurdle, Sordo was able to claim a huge 5.7s back from Evans on the 3.3km superspecial, keeping the pressure firmly on the Welshman as they prepare for Sunday’s final stages.

“Just a bit disappointed with that final superspecial really, I tried to save the tyre a little bit, probably a higher grip than we expected and so we fitted the soft (compound), but okay, at least it’s still in good shape for tomorrow,” Evans said.

“You never know what’s going to happen so we have to remain fully focused and give it our best shot.”

Having seen his cars running in 1-2-3 formation on Friday, Hyundai team principal Andrea Adamo was dismayed by the sight of first Thierry Neuville and then Tanak being forced out, alongside his second-string entry for Frenchman Pierre-Louis Loubet.

Nevertheless, he took heart from another strong performance from Sordo when the chips are down.

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Dani Sordo, Borja Rozada, Hyundai Motorsport Hyundai i20 Coupe WRC

Photo by: Fabien Dufour / Hyundai Motorsport

“I think he has shown to me by the way in 2019 and 2020 that every time that we need him he is there,” Adamo said. “He’s like the Navy SEAL: he comes to rescue us when we need and he’s always there.”

Behind all this drama, the Toyota of seven-time champion Sebastien Ogier, using a stock of fresh soft compound rubber, overpowered his young Japanese team-mate Takamoto Katsuta to claim third place at the end of the day.

A brief stall while donutting around a roundabout on the superspecial gave Ogier some mild concerns, but another podium remains firmly in sight for the current championship leader.

“For sure on a regular fight the podium was out of reach,” Ogier said. “We’re only there from trouble for others… for tomorrow I have still some new tyres which could be helpful for the end of the rally.”

Thierry Neuville, Martijn Wydaeghe, Hyundai Motorsport Hyundai i20 Coupe WRC

Photo by: Fabien Dufour / Hyundai Motorsport

The fourth Toyota of Kalle Rovanpera was retired for unspecified technical reasons. With three cars in the top four positions, the team will not restart him on Sunday in order to preserve the car for Rallye Italia-Sardegna in 10 days’ time.

M-Sport’s pair of Ford Fiesta WRCs of Gus Greensmith and Adrien Fourmaux hold fifth and sixth places overall despite engine management issues which affected both cars.

Finnish WRC refugee Esapekka Lappi continued to lead in WRC2 at the wheel of his VW Polo, enjoying a long battle with childhood friend Teemu Suninen’s M-Sport Ford Fiesta for much of the day.

Third place was held briefly by Hyundai’s Oliver Solberg until he ended up with two wheels hanging off a precipice in the final kilometres of the Amarante test.

However, the Swede was able to get going again after dropping just over a minute and rejoining in fifth place behind the Citroen C3 of defending champion Mads Ostberg and the second VW of Nikolay Gryazin.

In WRC3, the Citroen of points leader Yoann Rossel kept a narrow lead over the Skoda of Kajetan Kajetanowicz, with Britain’s 2019 European Rally Championship winner Chris Ingram third in his Skoda.

Sunday’s five stages will include two runs through the fabled 11.18km Fafe stage with the iconic jump between the crowds familiar from the Group B era to the present day. The second Fafe stage will close the rally and act as the points-scoring powerstage.

The Estonian had vaulted up from third to first on Friday evening after both his teammates, Dani Sordo and Thierry Neuville, hit trouble.

Their misfortune presented Tanak with all the incentive he needed to pull away from the Toyota of Elfyn Evans in second place, with Sordo battling the Welshman hard in his bid to ensure maximum manufacturers’ points for the Korean marque.

Tanak closed the morning loop by recording his 249th career stage win in the top category on the daunting 37.92 Amarante test, and holds a 19.2s advantage over Evans, with Sordo third at the mid-day service.

“I guess this morning the grip was quite consistent and I guess also the characteristic worked for the car… I felt a bit more free,” said the rally leader.

“It was a great way to wake up for sure and as I immediately had kind of good feeling I pushed a bit and then there was a clean stage but for sure it’s difficult to find much more from there.”

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A loop of three stages in cool, overcast conditions with a smattering of rain in the hills outside Porto awaited the crews as they continued their first full gravel event of the year.

The majority of runners elected to try and maximise available grip by taking four soft tyres with two of Pirelli’s hard compound as spares in case of need. With supplies of soft rubber limited to just eight tyres per car (and 24 of the hard compound), the conditions added another element to the day’s planning.

Neuville, restarting his Hyundai after crashing out of Friday’s penultimate stage, ran first on the road and went for hard rubber all round in a bid to preserve his stock of softs for Sunday’s points-scoring powerstage while sweeping the road for those behind him.

A mystery ailment then affected the Belgian’s Hyundai on a road section before the final stage of the morning loop, which obliged him to drop out of first place on the road and take the sixth starting spot after it was rectified.

Any suggestions that this was a little bit of gamesmanship on Hyundai’s part to get their man clear of road sweeping duties, or at least sweeping the road in front of anyone but his two high-flying teammates, were answered by team principal Andrea Adamo with his tongue firmly in his cheek.

“You overestimated me: I’m a poor Italian guy, immigrant in Germany, so I’m not so smart. I’m happy that you think I’m so sophisticated,” he said.

Neuville was still the slowest WRC car by 19.6s.

Toyota’s great hope for the future, Kalle Rovanpera, also took an odd mix of three tyres of each compound and almost immediately regretted it, to the point that he started to Tweet about the car’s curious handling between stages. Only Neuville was slower.

Takamoto Katsuta, Daniel Barritt, Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT Toyota Yaris WRC

Photo by: Toyota Racing

Takamoto Katsuta continued a hugely impressive run for Toyota in fourth place. The ex-Formula 3 driver has finished in sixth on all three rallies on the WRC schedule so far this season and is growing in pace and confidence on loose surfaces.

Katsuta’s pace kept him ahead of his seven-time champion teammate Sebastien Ogier, who gave his all on Friday while encumbered with road sweeping duties as the first man through the stages.

The Frenchman was less satisfied with his performance on Saturday morning, believing that he had gone the wrong way on setup in the cooler conditions and compounding his worries with a half-spin on the second stage of the morning.

“It’s a bit of both (tyres and setup) but we decided to use some used tyres this morning and we didn’t expect that we needed to use softs for the full loop to be honest, but finally more rain came and we had to use them,” Ogier said.

“It was not good for this morning but for the rest of the rally now we are one of the only guys to have still some new softs… Let’s see what we can do with that.”

Gus Greensmith kept in front of his new M-Sport teammate Adrien Fourmaux, who suffered a throttle issue on the first stage of the morning.

Tanak’s team-mate, early leader Dani Sordo, continued his strong run after the opening loop service halt to tease out his lead from 6.7 seconds before the break to 8.2s after the next three stages.

The Spaniard, driving Hyundai Motorsport’s third entry for the first time since Monte Carlo in January, kept ahead of his full-time team-mates Tanak and Thierry Neuville as they disputed second place.

Neuville had been driving out of his skin all day despite an unfavourable road position, starting second behind the Toyota of points leader Sebastien Ogier, which requires the early runners to sweep excess gravel off the road surface to the benefit of cars further down the order.

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The Belgian sat in third overall through the morning and then passed Tanak for second place, but on the seventh stage disaster struck both leading contenders.

Neuville and co-driver Martijn Wydaeghe had made an error in their pacenotes on the pre-event recce and came into a left-hand bend rather too ambitiously.

Their Hyundai ran wide and hit a tree stump in the verge, tearing the right rear corner off their car and putting them out of the running for the day.

Soon afterwards, Sordo was fighting a losing battle for grip as his tyres began to deteriorate after a long day’s running and eventually he spun.

This misdemeanour was then compounded by a recurrence of the low speed engine stalling that has troubled the team in the course of the past 12 months, resulting in Sordo dropping from first to third overall, with Tanak assuming the lead 2.7s ahead of Toyota’s Elfyn Evans.

Dani Sordo, Borja Rozada, Hyundai Motorsport Hyundai i20 Coupe WRC

Photo by: McKlein / Motorsport Images

The Welshman had opted for a cautious approach to the first day and it clearly paid dividends, keeping him firmly in contention amid the drama.

On the climactic penultimate stage, Evans was badly baulked by Neuville, who was attempting to drag his three-wheeled Hyundai to the finish line.

The incident cost Evans in excess of 25 seconds, causing the stewards to give him a notional time to minimise the damage.

Points leader Ogier meanwhile treated the huge crowds at the event to a masterclass of driving skill as he sought to minimise the impact of his road position.

The seven-time champion’s imperative was to get ahead of the WRC backmarkers before the road order is reversed on Saturday morning, and having been pegged back to set only the seventh or eighth fastest time through the opening five stages, Ogier flew through the afternoon.

Setting fifth fastest time on the sixth stage of the day, he then combined a Herculean drive on stage seven with the ill fortune of Sordo, Neuville and Evans take an improbable stage win and leap up to fifth on the leaderboard.

The day ended with a head-to-head superspecial stage at the Pista da Corsilha rallycross track in Porto, providing plenty of theatre for a healthy crowd, albeit some way short of its 35,000 peak due to Covid prevention measures.

Oliver Solberg, Aaron Johnston, Hyundai Motorsport N Hyundai i20 R5

Photo by: Jordi Rierola / Hyundai Motorsport

Adding to the festival occasion, local hero Armindo Araujo garnered a standing ovation for winning his head-to-head in WRC3, while Oliver Solberg replicated his former world champion father Petter’s standing-on-a-moving-car routine in WRC2.

When the big guns came out to close the action, M-Sport’s Gus Greensmith crowned a day that saw him set two second-fastest stage times by beating his highly fancied new team-mate Adrien Fourmaux.

Ogier beat his team-mate Rovanpera, then Takamoto Katsuta in the fourth Toyota beat Sordo in their head-to-head encounter.

The Spaniard’s difficult day had been added to by a tyre delaminating on the motorway en route to the superspecial stage, cleaning off the bodywork on his right rear corner.

The action continues six special stages on Saturday, and will close with another superspecial in Porto during the evening.

Spanish star Sordo capitalised on an advantageous road position, with the stages having been swept clean by eight cars before him, to take the early lead in Hyundai’s third entry. The team’s two full-time drivers, Ott Tanak and Thierry Neuville, hold second and third respectively.

As the opening gravel rally of the season, Portugal also marks the first time that the field has taken to the loose surface on tyres from the WRC’s new tyre supplier, Pirelli.

All of the crews set off with four soft tyres bolted on and one hard compound in the boot to be rotated as the stages played out, with the majority of drivers hoping that the prevailing cloud might unleash a little rain on proceedings.

Chief among them was Toyota’s championship leader Sebastien Ogier who, running first on the road, is obliged to contend with the least favourable conditions.

Although there was some moisture and fog early in the morning, it was insufficient to help the seven-time champion and he currently languishes in eighth position at the first service halt, 31 seconds off Sordo’s pace.

Britain’s Elfyn Evans heads the charge for Toyota in fourth place, 17.6s off Sordo’s pace, with his Japanese tea-mate Takamoto Katsuta 1.4s behind him.

In a strong morning for the Ford Fiestas of M-Sport, Gus Greensmith posted equal third-fastest time on the opening 12km test of the day but fell back after suffering a puncture that removed much of the rear bodywork of his car on the third stage.

Greensmith’s rookie teammate Adrien Fourmaux, in his second career WRC start and his first on gravel, was well placed to take up the running for the Cumbrian squad, however. Fourmaux holds sixth place at the end of the first loop, ahead of the Toyotas of Kalle Rovanpera and Ogier.

Rally leader Sordo was thoroughly enjoying his day at the top of the timesheets, having struggled to make an impact on his previous outing on the season-opening Monte Carlo Rally.

Since then he has parted company with longtime co-driver Carlos del Barrio and been joined by 40-year-old Borja Rozada, who has competed in recent years alongside Pepe Lopez in the Spanish national gravel rally championship.

Sordo was the only runner among the Hyundais not to use his spare hard compound tyre, feeling that he was able to conserve the life of his soft rubber without a detrimental effect on his pace.

Two drivers have gone missing from the WRC2 ranks thanks to positive Covid tests, with championship leader Andreas Mikkelsen pulling out in the days before the rally and Ole-Christian Veiby being forced to withdraw after shakedown.

The category has still provided an engaging early lead battle between Esapekka Lappi’s VW Polo and the Citroen C3 of Mads Ostberg, although this was truncated after Ostberg suffered a puncture on Stage 3, promoting the VW of Russian talent Nikolai Grazin to second place and M-Sport’s Teemu Suninen to third.

Emil Lindholm leads WRC3 in his Skoda Fabia, with Britain’s Chris Ingram second in his similar car 7.9s behind, with Kajetan Kajetanowicz third in another Fabia.

A total of eight stages will be run into the evening on this first day of the rally, with 20 timed tests to be completed by the finish on Sunday afternoon.

The result means that Ogier reclaims the championship lead that he held following his opening round victory in Monte Carlo, with Neuville holding second in the points after logging his third successive podium finish.

A bright and early start saw Evans taking the initiative, having struggled to be as ‘brave’ as he felt Saturday’s stages had required him to be.

With an abundance of bravery on Sunday morning, however, the Welshman claimed a stage win from Neuville to start the final day, closing the gap to leader Ogier from 6.9 seconds overnight to 4.3s.

The Frenchman had meanwhile hit trouble in the most literal sense when a road traffic accident on the way to the opening stage knocked co-driver Julien Ingrassia’s door out of shape and took away some of the sensitive aerodynamic integrity of his Yaris WRC.

On the following stage, Evans won again from Neuville with Ogier dropping 8.4s and handing the overall lead to the Welshman.

On their return for a second pass through the opening stage of the day, Neuville stretched every sinew to go fastest by 0.4s from an in-control Evans, with Ogier a further 1.5s behind.

This left the top three crews separated by 8s, with Hyundai’s Ott Tanak holding a lonely fourth place more than a minute behind and taking things gently to preserve his tyres for a big push on the points-scoring powerstage.

Running in reverse order, Tanak was the first of the big guns to make a bid for the five bonus points but he struggled with the amount of dirt thrown onto the stage by the early runners and fell short of the provisional fastest time set his beleaguered teammate Craig Breen.

With 8s to find, Neuville was left relying on a disaster to befall the Toyotas but gamely threw his i20 WRC through the stage with habitual flair. In the end, the Belgian hit a patch of dirt on the approach to the last major junction and lost more than 2s.

Ogier ran next and had to deliver a memorable save when his Yaris bottomed-out on a flat-out stretch and almost pitched him into a house but he recovered to go provisionally fastest by 3s.

This left Evans with a reasonable target, but a slow opening sector reduced his advantage to less than a second.

That time was recovered in the next sector, where Ogier almost came to grief, but then the Welshman was caught out in the final right-left complex, ploughing over an immaculate village green before regaining the road and crossing the line having fallen short by just 0.6s.

The result stands as the third closest finish in WRC history, replacing Evans and Neuville’s 0.7s gap at the end of the 2017 Rally Argentina. Only the 2007 Rally New Zealand (0.3s) and the 2011 Jordan Rally (0.2s) are closer in the history books.

An overjoyed Ogier said: “I was thinking it would not be enough. It looks like it really went close up to the last metres, maybe a last mistake from Elfyn hand us the win but I think over the weekend the whole team have done an amazing job.

“Of course the emotion for us now is super strong it’s like it was a crazy rollercoaster for us this weekend between the puncture (on Friday) the issue this morning obviously and I was glad to still be in the race honestly and now just to catch this, like this, I guess that’s why we do this sport for the emotion.”

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Fifth place was retained by M-Sport’s debutant Adrien Fourmaux, who blotted his copybook by clipping the inside of a corner early on the second stage and getting himself wedged in someone’s front garden.

Fortunately for Fourmaux, there were plenty of spectators on hand to clear his beached car and the minute lost did little to alter his position ahead of the Toyota of Takamoto Katsuta, his M-Sport teammate Gus Greensmith and the struggling Hyundai of Craig Breen.

In WRC2, returning champion Mads Ostberg got his title defence off to an ideal start by claiming an unchallenged victory in his Citroen C3.

The Skoda Fabia of points leader Andreas Mikkelsen went off on the opening day and Ostberg’s nearest challenger, Nikolay Gryazin, was hampered by technical issues with his VW Polo before going out of third place on Sunday morning.

All of this drama left Teemu Suninen to claim a distant second place for M-Sport ahead of Anglo-Bolivian regular Marco Bulacia’s Skoda.

WRC3 saw Polish driver Kajetan Kajetanowicz take victory in his Skoda from the similar car of Emil Lindholm.

WRC3 points leader Yoann Rossell recovered from an off on Saturday to complete the podium in his Citroen, while category debutant and 2019 European champion Chris Ingram took fifth.

In the opening round of this year’s one-make Junior WRC, British driver Jon Armstrong took an assured victory in his Ford Fiesta from that of Austrian Martins Sesks, with Finnish youngster Lauri Joona completing the podium.

Elfyn Evans is second in a Toyota 1-2, with overnight leader Thierry Neuville and his Hyundai teammate Ott Tanak trailing behind.

Neuville, Tanak and fellow Hyundai driver Craig Breen all started the day on two of Pirelli’s hard compound tyres and two of the softer compound with a single soft spare.

The soft rubber had been the way to go in the cooler conditions on Friday, as proven by the 24 seconds lost by Tanak on his all-hard choice.

But Saturday dawned warm and sunny weather, the option of hard tyres all round, as chosen by all of the Toyota and M-Sport Ford runners, proved to be the way forward.

Neuville’s 7.7s overnight advantage turned into a 4.3s deficit after Ogier took command with his fourth consecutive stage win of the event on SS9, with Evans slotting into second behind him.

After Toyota's Japanese protege Takamoto Katsuta won the day's second stage, Ogier and Evans extended their advantage with one stage win apiece on the remaining two stages of the loop, while Neuville struggled with his tyres, a broken brake disk and a recurrence of the low speed engine stalling that blighted his 2020 season.

The Belgian thus trailed Ogier by 19.7s as they returned to service, with Tanak a further 18s behind in fourth as he struggled to regain any of the 30s he'd lost to Neuville on Friday.

“For us it was pretty clear that [the hard compound] was the choice this morning so we were a bit surprised to see the choice of the Hyundais,” said Ogier.

Hyundai principal Andrea Adamo took full responsibility for another event, such as Monte Carlo this year and Turkey in 2020, in which his team’s strategic frailties were left cruelly exposed.

“From when I’m here, most of the time, when there has been a difficult tyre choice we were able to pick the wrong one,” he said.

“So it’s something in the organisation I set up that doesn’t work. I take responsibility for it, and for which I had better move my ass and solve it.”

Unusually perhaps, the Hyundai drivers were rather more sanguine about their plight than the man in charge.

“I think you should not listen Adamo too much, he’s always very critical to himself and then it’s obviously not everything down to himself,” said Tanak.

With their cars on the correct tyres for the afternoon loop, the Hyundais went off with a request to "make miracles" from their team boss and Neuville duly delivered, winning the first of the afternoon tests and benefitting from a puncture for Ogier to reclaim 10s.

On SS14 it was Katsuta who repeated his morning form and won again, helping him to place seventh overall by the end of the day.

Neuville’s fightback was slowing however, as he claimed back just 0.1s from Ogier and then tied with the Frenchman on the penultimate stage of the day. He closed off the second day 10.4s behind Ogier and with 6.9s to find on tomorrow’s four stages to overhaul Evans for second place.

“I had an issue with my jack and I couldn’t change tyres all afternoon loop, so my tyres were already a bit dead for the last stage,” the Belgian said. “I tried to continue to push and obviously we expected to lose a little bit.”

Tanak holds a lonely fourth place, almost half a minute behind Neuville and 51s ahead of impressive WRC debutant Adrien Fourmaux's M-Sport Ford.

The Frenchman's teammate Gus Greensmith, partnered with veteran co-driver Chris Patterson for the first time, has also shown flashes of potential to hold sixth overall ahead of Katsuta, with Breen's third Hyundai rounding out the WRC runners.

In WRC2, Nikolay Gryazin took the lead briefly after overnight leader Mads Ostberg struggled to find confidence in his pace notes. But Ostberg swiftly overhauled the Russian, who then lost his power steering and more than a minute, allowing Teemu Suninen through into second.

The WRC3 class is led by Kajetan Kajetanowicz after overnight leader Joann Rossel suffered problems. Chris Ingram, contesting his first event since winning the 2019 European Rally Championship title, put in a solid day’s work on his WRC event debut to climb from sixth to third, two minutes behind second-place Emil Lindholm.

Based in the capital city of Zagreb, and with stages on the narrow lanes in the north of the country, Rally Croatia marks the WRC’s first all-asphalt rally since Germany in 2019.

The stages brought huge variations in the quality of the surface from one corner to the next, along with jumps and tight, technical sections.

The biggest feature of the event so far, however, has been mud and gravel dragged out of the verge, putting a premium on road position.

With the Day 1 starting order decided by championship position, this handed Toyota’s 20-year-old star Kalle Rovanpera a distinct advantage as he headed into the opening stage.

The WRC’s youngest-ever points leader duly began impressing from the opening split time but then slid wide on the exit of an acute right-hander less than a mile from the end of the stage and rolled out of the rally.

“I was struggling with the understeer of the car quite much the whole stage,” said the rather rueful Finn.

“I just came in and did my braking and tried to go in through the corner and I lose the car already in the entry of the corner, I never made the proper racing line… a bit too much speed and then understeer and that’s the result, so, my mistake.”

Rovanpera’s demise handed the honour of leading the field to Neuville, who was quick to capitalise.

The Belgian has yet to challenge for victory in 2021 after ditching his long-time co-driver Nicolas Gilsoul on the eve of the Monte Carlo Rally.

In the opening rounds of the season, Neuville had to establish a new rapport with current incumbent Martijn Wydaeghe, but the pairing appears more assured in Croatia after Wydaeghe, a natural Flemish speaker, worked hard between rallies to get his French pace notes up to scratch.

Neuville duly won three of the four stages in the morning loop; only failing to capitalise on Stage 3 when Britain’s Elfyn Evans recorded the first fastest time of the day for Toyota.

Sébastien Ogier, Julien Ingrassia, Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT Toyota Yaris WRC

Photo by: Toyota Racing

Evans held second place at the end of the first loop, 7.3 seconds behind Neuville and 5.0s in front of his team-mate, seven-time WRC champion Sebastien Ogier, in third.

The defending champion narrowly avoided coming to grief on the same corner as Rovanpera and was lucky to escape with just a puncture, costing him only a couple of seconds over the short distance to the stage end.

Ogier felt that his setup choices for the morning loop needed reassessing if he was to challenge the leaders.

“It’s around the differential that I’ve made some change, something I haven’t tried in the test, but I expected a bit more difficult condition actually this morning, actually,” he said.

“I expected, actually, more humidity, and I’ll try to make some change on that back (to) something I know and I hope to be able to pick up a bit more speed there.”

Some speed was found on the afternoon run through the loop, with Ogier winning three of the four stages and passing Evans for second place in the process.

Not only was Ogier well and truly back in the lead battle as a result, but also he recorded his 600th WRC career stage win on Stage 7.

A big gap opened up between the top three and the rest of the field on the morning loop, headed by 2019 WRC champion Ott Tanak in his Hyundai.

The Estonian made an unconventional tyre selection, opting for hard compound rubber all round, and dropped 25 seconds as he struggled to get comfortable on the tricky Croatian surface.

“Like ice!” he said of his troubles, and also rued being forced to run through the dirt left behind by the cars in front. “The road is full of shit to be honest,” he added.

The third Hyundai of Craig Breen was also considerably down on pace, ending the day 22.9s behind Tanak, while a spirited battle between the M-Sport Fiestas of Britain’s Gus Greensmith and WRC debutant Adrien Fourmaux ended its first day with the Frenchman 7s to the good.

In WRC2, defending champion Mads Ostberg made his first appearance of the season for Citroen, having been a member of the TV punditry team for the opening two rounds.

The Norwegian ended his opening day with a slender advantage over the VW Polo of Russia’s Nikolay Gryazin, with championship leader Andreas Mikkelsen crashing out and the M-Sport entry of Teemu Suninen almost 45s adrift.

Current WRC3 points leader Yoann Rossel kept Citroen at the top of the most junior Rally2 category, 2.2s clear of the Skoda of Polish driver Kajetan Kajetanowicz while Britain’s 2019 European champion, Chris Ingram, holds sixth on his first appearance at world championship level.

The action continues tomorrow with another eight-stage marathon, and concludes on Sunday with four final stages, including the bonus points-paying powerstage.

The final day consisted of two passes through the 22.47 km Aittajarvi stage and Toyota claimed a 1-2 on its morning run as Elfyn Evans claimed his second stage win of the event from Rovanpera, with the Hyundai of Thierry Neuville just 0.1s behind in third.

The battle between Rovanpera and Neuville for second place on the rally would also determine the provisional championship lead. The points leader coming into the Lapland-based rally was defending title holder Sebastien Ogier, who had battled an unfavourable road position throughout the event, and restarted on Sunday after crashing out at the flying finish of Saturday’s final stage.

The Frenchman’s only objective was to rescue some points from the Powerstage and he duly treated the world to a textbook performance on the ragged edge. Ogier’s time was almost 11 seconds faster than his morning run, but this provisional fastest time was something at which the rest of the field took aim.

The first to challenge Ogier was teenager Oliver Solberg, in his first appearance at the wheel of a pukka WRC car for Hyundai. Solberg threw everything at the wall – literally – his Hyundai pinballing between the snow banks and, almost inevitably, he ended up going off and dropping 15 seconds.

Evans was next through and he fell short of matching Ogier’s pace but then Irishman Craig Breen put on a display of fantastically controlled aggression for Hyundai to set a new benchmark, 1.5s faster than the Frenchman. Breen had been frustrated in his first WRC outing since finishing second on last year’s Rally Estonia, and he survived a scare early in the day after the team was forced to take out and replace his gearbox in order to cure an overnight oil leak.

The engineers delivered the repair with just seconds to spare and Breen’s increase in tempo on Sunday was impressive – although it inadvertently put a spanner in the works for team-mate Neuville in his battle with Rovanpera. In the end, Neuville was short of Breen’s time by 0.1s and then Rovanpera sliced across the finish line fastest of all, beating Breen by 0.2s to secure the championship lead.

In contrast, rally leader Tanak took a more measured approach to set the fourth fastest time through the stage, adding two bonus points to the 25 that he won for the event overall.

“You know first when you come to a new event you never know what to expect,” said Tanak. “This weekend we came to Finland, kind of home country of Toyota, [Gazoo Racing WRT has a base in Finland] and also Rovanpera was expected to be very strong so the pressure was there for sure and then we knew it’s going to be very complicated to take the fight. But in the end I think we did a very good weekend… just enough and nothing too much.”

Having failed to score on the opening round in Monte Carlo, the 27 points that Tanak took away from the Arctic Rally boosts him back into fifth in the drivers’ championship and helped to halve Hyundai’s deficit to Toyota in the manufacturers’ points.

New championship leader Rovanpera expressed satisfaction with the result, albeit tinged with frustration after struggling with his setup earlier in the rally.

“This weekend I wanted to fight for top place and I made a mistake and it was not in the optimum pace,” he said. “But I have to say I was pushing the whole weekend, maximum all the time, I think it was a good weekend from my side.”

Before the prizegiving, a minute’s silence was held in memory of 1983 world champion Hannu Mikkola, with an F-18 Hornet from the Finnish Air Force flying overhead in an emotional tribute led by his former co-driver, FIA president Jean Todt, and his former team-mate, FIA Women in Motorsport president Michele Mouton.

In WRC2, Esapekka Lappi completed his dominant return to competition with victory. Not only did he remind the world of his fierce competitiveness as a driver but also just how good Volkswagen’s now-abandoned rally cars are.

It was, relatively speaking, a disaster for Andreas Mikkelsen after his bullish start to the season in Monte Carlo. Mikkelsen came out of the gates of his WRC2 campaign in Monte Carlo declaring that intended to dominate each event to prove his worthiness of a top WRC car in 2022.

The Norwegian put a positive spin on being forced to settle for taking decent points from second place, but fellow countryman Mads Ostberg, who will himself return to defend his WRC2 crown later this year, was cheekily merciless in ribbing Mikkelsen from the commentary box.

In WRC3, Finnish driver Teemu Asunmaa and his Estonian rival Egon Kaur held station in the top two positions, as they had throughout the rally, with another Finn, Mikko Heikkila, completing the podium.

Having completed their winter running in Monte Carlo and Finland, the WRC teams now prepare for the debut of Rally Croatia on the WRC schedule on 22-25 April.

The Estonian’s teammate Thierry Neuville posted an electrifying time on the final stage of the day, 12.3 seconds faster than Tanak, to close within 2s of the Toyota’s Kalle Rovanpera, who holds second place overall.

Three stages were run in morning loop and in repeated the afternoon, with a service at the midway point. Tyre wear and preserving the Pirelli studded rubber was the major preoccupation for most teams, with drivers finding that their front end grip fell off a cliff through the course of the day.

Tanak won two stages in the morning and went fastest again on the first stage of the after the service, then settled into a rhythm and protected his tyres while Rovanpera and Neuville battled it out.

“All to plan: the tyres are quite tired so it was important to get here without any mistakes, so it’s all good” said leader Tanak.

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Irishman Craig Breen in the third Hyundai holds fourth place but was left frustrated as he fell back from the podium battle by half a minute. Breen remains 10s in front of Elfyn Evans’s Toyota, as the Welshman battled a less-than-favourable road position, as did his teammate and defending champion Sebastien Ogier close behind.

Ogier had suffered worst from sweeping the stages at the front of the field on Friday, which left him continuing to act as sweeper for Saturday’s stages and falling more than a minute behind the leaders. Ogier then went off 50 metres from the end of the final stage and lost so much time that the team has elected to retire the car, allowing his team more time in order to try and maximise his setup for the points-scoring Power Stage on Sunday.

Tough end to the day for us but I want to thank the people who helped us dig the car out of the snow bank 🙏🏻 Let’s move on, better days will come!#WRC #ArcticRallyFinland pic.twitter.com/MsRcngNtgS

— Sébastien Ogier (@SebOgier) February 27, 2021

Ogier’s misfortune allowed teenage sensation Oliver Solberg up into sixth place overall in his first appearance at the wheel of a full WRC car for Hyundai. The Toyota of Takamoto Katsuta and the M-Sport Fords of Teemu Suninen and Gus Greensmith round out the top category.

Tenth place overall and top of the WRC2 category falls to Esapekka Lappi’s Volkswagen, with a 50s advantage over the Skoda of Andreas Mikkelsen.

Just one stage remains on the Arctic Rally, the 22.47 km Aittajarvi test, which will be run twice, with the second pass acting as Power Stage with points on offer to the five fastest cars.

The Estonian now holds a 23.6-second advantage over the Toyota of Kalle Rovanpera, who has passed the Hyundai of Craig Breen for second place overall.

Britain’s Elfyn Evans, lying fifth, won the second stage of the day in his Toyota to keep the pressure on the fourth place Hyundai of Thierry Neuville.

Teenage Swedish driver Oliver Solberg holds sixth place in his first-ever appearance at the wheel of a full WRC car, driving a 2020-spec Hyundai and keeping in front of the 2021-spec Toyotas of Takamoto Katsuta and defending champion Sebastien Ogier. The M-Sport Ford Fiestas of Teemu Suninen and Gus Greensmith complete the top 10.

“In the end a good morning, yes, but very, very demanding,” said Tanak. “The stages are incredibly fast and at that speed, never seeing the roads, the pacenotes are never 100% and you always have places where it’s a bit this way or the other way… so far so good!”

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In WRC2, the return of former M-Sport driver Esapekka Lappi in a VW has seen the Finn build a 33s advantage over Norwegian championship leader Andreas Mikkelsen’s Skoda, having won all five of the stages run so far.

The battle for WRC3 honours is currently separated by just 3.3s, the advantage with Finnish driver Teemu Asunmaa’s Skoda ahead of Estonia’s Egon Kaur in his VW.

The same loop of three stages will be repeated this afternoon with large sections of snow expected to have been scrubbed away by the passage of the cars to expose underlying gravel.

Successfully balancing the demands of pace and tyre management is therefore expected to be at a premium to reach the end of the day safely.

Although it is one of Europe’s oldest rallies – with a roll of honour dating back to 1966 and featuring names such as Hannu Mikkola, Ari Vatanen, Henri Toivonen and Tommi Makinen – the Arctic Rally is making its debut on the WRC schedule.

Lapland made a late substitution in place of the traditional Rally Sweden, which was originally scheduled for this weekend. The Swedish event was abandoned due to concern over the ongoing effects of the Coronavirus pandemic.

One significant benefit from moving inside the Arctic Circle has been the guarantee of snow, after recent snow-free editions of the Swedish event. Even so, the temperatures for much of the day hovered just above freezing point and tyre management in such conditions became of paramount importance.

The opening day consisted of two passes through one the longest stages of the event, the 31.05km Sarriojarvi test. The first pass was made in crystalline afternoon sunshine and the second in full darkness with spotlamp clusters ablaze.

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Toyota’s defending drivers’ world champion Sebastien Ogier, winner of last month’s Monte Carlo Rally, led the field away and bore the brunt of the road sweeping duties as a result. The Frenchman’s pace was considerably compromised by the virgin snow, even after his Toyota team had managed to convince the organisers to send a plough through the stage on Thursday evening.

Britain’s Elfyn Evans, winner of last year’s Rally Sweden, ran second on the road in his Toyota and was able to hang on in the top five overall after a typically gutsy performance, just over two seconds behind the Hyundai of Thierry Neuville. 

While the men at the top of the points standings struggled, the advantage lay with those drivers further down the running order, and for many people the pre-start favourite was Toyota’s 20-year-old charger Kalle Rovanpera, who won this event in 2020. The youngster set a blistering pace in the early part of his first run but then dropped 12 seconds extricating himself from a snow bank, handing the advantage to the Hyundais of Tanak and Craig Breen.

Estonian Tanak, the 2019 drivers’ champion, set a time 3.6 seconds faster than Breen, with the Irishman frustrated at not being able to make better use of his optimum road position as the last WRC car in to the stage.

“At this big boys’ game you have to be on it from the first pass and I was way, way too slow on my notes and just didn’t take advantage of the road that I had in front of me,” Breen said.

After nightfall, the second pass of the day revealed that the road surface had changed considerably after the passage of 55 cars on hot, studded tyres. 

“The stage is in really bad condition,” reported Rovanpera after his run, again losing out to Tanak and Breen but holding third place overnight. “It’s a lot of gravel so my front tyres are completely gone and I think I lost a lot of time in the end. If somebody can manage tyres really good he can be really quick.” 

Many drivers found that their front tyres were being excessively worn, and for overnight leader Tanak there was considerable relief to be going back into service. He alone in electing to carry only one spare wheel with him in order to save weight, and this meant that he had to drive creatively to ensure that he preserved his rubber. 

 “I knew that it’s going to be a disaster for the tyres,” Tanak said after securing his 16-second lead overnight. “I tried to be very, very nice since the beginning and after 10 kms I felt that ‘shit it’s finished’ and I still had 20 to go… so in the end it was just handbrake [to slow the car].”

The action continues on Saturday with a loop of three stages to be run both in the morning and after the lunchtime service halt. 

The defending drivers’ champion broke the record of seven Monte Carlo wins set by his former nemesis, Sebastien Loeb, and also equalled Walter Rohrl’s 37-year-old record of winning the WRC’s blue riband event with four different manufacturers during his career.

Toyota driver Ogier claimed victory on three of the four stages held on Sunday, including the Power Stage with its five additional points to be added to both his own score and, for the first time in WRC history, to the manufacturers’ championship total as well.

Britain’s Elfyn Evans finished second, completing a 1-2 finish for Toyota overall and a 1-2-3 in the Power Stage points behind Kalle Rovanpera.

Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville fought back from a difficult first couple of days to lead resistance against the Toyota juggernaut, finishing in an eventual third place overall alongside rookie co-driver Martijn Wydaeghe.

The Belgian took a blistering win on the penultimate test of the day but chose to settle for the bottom step of the podium rather than attempting to put pressure on Evans for second.

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Rovanpera’s Toyota finished fourth with the Hyundai of Dani Sordo splitting him from the fourth Yaris of Toyota junior driver Takamoto Katsuta.

At the finish line, Ogier was emotional as he celebrated such a landmark achievement.

“It’s not a bad end of the weekend,” he said. “The car’s been amazing, I really enjoy the weekend, it’s been such a pleasure so I think I almost have tears in my eyes now.

“I think it was a good decision to do one more year, the team is great, such a huge thanks I want to give to all of you.”

For his part, runner-up Evans took consolation from looking at the big picture after bagging a good haul of points towards his 2021 championship ambitions.

“It’s been good but I just felt never 100 percent as it should have been,” he said. “Of course there were some good stages but never consistently where I would have really liked to be… Seb was better this weekend.”

The event marked the debut of Toyota’s new team principal, its erstwhile driver Jari-Matti Latvala, who expressed delight with his squad’s achievements.

“I must say I’m really, really proud for the team I mean, what a fantastic result,” he enthused.

“To have four cars in top six and then doing 1-2 victory, what else can I ask? And then maximum points on the Power Stage. It’s incredible. I couldn’t be in a better place where I am now and we have the best drivers.”

The euphoria in the Toyota camp was the polar opposite of the emotions being shown by its rivals at Hyundai and M-Sport.

Leader on the first day, Hyundai’s Ott Tanak was unable to restart on Sunday after two punctures on the penultimate day, and both Neuville and Sordo were forced to rein in their pace to secure the team’s points.

Neuville said: “I think we couldn’t have done really much better sometimes, we were missing a bit of confidence, but at the end it worked and we are there and good points for the team even if it wasn’t the greatest week for Hyundai.”

M-Sport’s chances of getting on the podium disappeared off the side of a mountain on the opening stage of the rally, alongside the Fiesta WRC of Teemu Suninen.

This left Gus Greensmith to fight on alone to finish in eighth place as the last of the top runners after a performance that he wants to put behind him as soon as possible.

“I’d say it’s been the worst performance of my career so far,” the Englishman said bluntly.

“It was really hard for all the guys back at M-Sport to even just get the cars here in this current situation so I felt, with the preparation I had, I should have delivered a much better performance.”

Seventh place overall went to the dominant winner of the WRC2 category, Andreas Mikkelsen, at the wheel of his Tok Sport Skoda Fabia.

Like Ogier, the Norwegian veteran started the event as odds-on favourite and put pressure on himself to dominate the category in his bid to return to a works WRC seat for 2022.

In WRC3, Yoann Rossel survived a late scare after his right rear tyre came off the rim on the final stage, but had enough in hand over his fellow Citroen drivers to claim the win.

Final results (Top 10):

On Friday, Ogier had lost half a minute following a puncture on the penultimate stage of the day, although he immediately reclaimed 16s from his Toyota teammate Elfyn Evans before the overnight halt.

Restarting in the dark in order to comply with local COVID-19 legislation, Ogier then resumed his imperious progress on the opening 18.3 km La Breole – Salonnet stage.

The Frenchman crossed the line 17.8 seconds faster than the Welshman and 20s faster than anyone else in the rally.

With Ogier leading Evans and the third Yaris WRC of Kalle Rovanpera, Toyota’s grasp on the event was further strengthened by a disastrous stage for its nearest challenger, the Hyundai of 2019 champion Ott Tanak.

The Estonian had been hanging on grimly through Friday’s stages but his Saturday run began with a spin that was followed by a puncture which sent him hurtling back down the order.

Dawn had broken before the start of the second stage of the day, the 20.48 km Saint-Clement – Freissinieres test, and Thierry Neuville brought some cheer to his beleaguered Hyundai squad by firing in his first stage win of the event.

Last year’s Monte winner had struggled throughout the opening days as he and newly-installed co-driver Martijn Wydaeghe sought to find a working relationship.

On stage 10, however, Neuville hit form; setting a time 42.2s faster than Ogier’s and closing up on the third placed Toyota of Kalle Rovanpera in the overall order.

Any good cheer that Neuville’s stage win brought to Hyundai was soon tempered by the sight of Tanak stopping on the stage with another blown tyre. Having already used the only spare on board his i20 WRC, the Estonian’s day was over.

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After a short service break the crews returned to La Breole – Salonnet for the final stage of the day, where the Toyotas once again asserted their authority. This time Evans was the winner by a scant 1.3s from Ogier.

But Ogier was unperturbed and holds a 13.0s advantage as the teams prepare for four stages on the final day.

“The condition have changed a lot since the first pass and also since the gravel crew have passed so it was a little of what we see and try to trust it,” he said. “But yeah it was a clean drive for me.”

Neuville’s scintillating form did not continue into the final stage of the day and this bought Rovanpera some breathing space at the overnight halt, with a 7s gap opening between them.

“I had a problem with my earplugs so Jonne (co-driver Jonne Halttunen), had to scream all the time so I could hear the notes,” Rovanpera explained.

“I didn’t hear the notes so well so maybe at the beginning I was not so comfortable but then when I get used to the result it was okay.”

The battle for the final podium position is now more than a minute clear of fifth place man Dani Dordo at the wheel of the third works Hyundai.

The Spaniard had been at sea for much of Friday but his pace improved dramatically on Saturday morning before once again at the end of the day.

In WRC2, the day delivered another big chunk of time to veteran Andreas Mikkelsen, who holds seventh place overall and a 2m14s advantage over the M-Sport Fiesta of Adrien Fourmaux, with Oliver Solberg’s Hyundai now third.

In WRC3, Yohan Rossel enjoyed another solid day, maintaining his lead over Yoann Bonato and Nicolas Ciamin.

A very early alarm call awaited the mechanics and crews in readiness for an 06:10 start time, the schedule for this weekend’s event being dictated by local COVID-19 measures.

Compliance meant that the first two stages of the day would be run in the dark and, with uncertain conditions in the mountains, this led to plenty of hesitancy among the crews which handed a clear advantage to seven-time Monte winner, Sebastien Ogier.

to match his early form. His main issue came from being hindered by his Hyundai’s engine stalling in the hairpins, a recurrence of a problem that dogged the team in 2020.

Tanak went with the same tyre selection as the Toyotas, with a mix of four super soft tyres and two studded full snow tyres to tackle the peaks. The Estonian’s team mates, Thierry Neuville and Dani Sordo, meanwhile went out with three of each type.

Tanak’s cautious approach in the darkness saw him finish fifth on the first stage of the day and drop to fourth overall behind all three of the front-line Toyotas.

Ogier won the stage but Kalle Rovanpera assumed the overall lead before his illustrious team-mate let rip through the next stage to take control of the event.

In Ogier’s wake, Evans recovered from a half-spin on the first stage of the morning to take second after Rovanpera incurred a 10 second penalty for late check-in.

Notwithstanding Rovanpera’s transgression, all three Toyotas pulled away from Tanak, their closest challenger, while the tyre choices of the other Hyundais put them in all sorts of bother.

Sordo’s car was running crabwise through the stages on its odd mix of rubber, while Neuville was embroiled in one drama after another.

The morning loop ended with Ogier 11.3 seconds ahead of Evans but the positions were reversed on the first stage after service when Ogier suffered a puncture and a spin that cost more than half a minute in total.

The seven-time champion was livid and made his feelings clear when he reached the end of the stage. “I mean we knew this tyre was very weak for punctures and unfortunately it's happened already,” he said.

Rovanpera lost half a minute after going off into a field, which allowed the ever-consistent Evans through to a lead of 20s over Tanak, with Ogier a further 3s behind.

Despite being forced to put on a studded tyre to replace his punctured wheel, Ogier harnessed his frustration to light up the final stage of the day. He swept through in a time that immediately claimed back 16s from Evans’s lead.

“I was too careful probably in some places but the car just has a mind of its own sometimes… so much aquaplaning and the roads are so narrow,” Evans said. “It’s a great time from him (Ogier).”

Tanak continued with his solid run and the other Hyundais had a much better setup for the afternoon loop.

On the final stage of the day, Sordo was just 1.3s off Ogier’s stunning benchmark time.

This increasing good cheer within the Hyundai camp was nevertheless tempered on the final stage when Pierre-Louis Loubet, in the team’s older-spec car, aquaplaned head-first into a rock face.

Neither Loubet or co-driver Vincent Landais were injured, but it is uncertain if the car can be repaired to restart the event on Saturday. The stage was red-flagged soon afterwards.

In WRC2, it was the veteran Andreas Mikkelsen who put all his experience to work at the wheel of his Skoda Fabia.

The Norwegian spent the day building a lead almost a minute over the M-Sport Fiesta of Adrien Fourmaux, while the train of Citroen C3s at the head of WRC3 rolled on with Yohan Rossel maintaining his lead over Yoann Bonato and Nicolas Ciamin.

The Estonian claimed victory on both of the first two stages as he returned to an event that saw him fly 40 metres down a mountainside in 2020.

Tyres were the major talking point of the day, with Pirelli replacing Michelin as the WRC's new control supplier.

A shortage of pre-event testing in the truncated close season caused many teams to run conservatively; all the more so as no Shakedown was permitted under the tight enforcement of measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in the Haute Alps prefecture.

It is understood that the Italian rubber has less grip in wet and snowy conditions, but this escalates considerably whenever the road dries.

Wet roads fringed with snow were far from optimum, therefore, but Tanak is a man on a mission to reclaim the title and wanted to capitalise on any hesitancy among his rivals.

At the start of his second season in Hyundai's i20 WRC, Tanak felt considerably more at ease than at this time in 2020.

"For sure the car has a lot more stability than last year and I have definitely better feedback from the car," said the 2019 drivers' champion, who found no problems arising from the unfamiliar rubber.

"Well, in just wet conditions they really have some grip and they seem to have good performance but other places, when you hit some mud, the step is quite big," he said.

Keeping closest to Tanak's pace was Toyota's young Finnish star, Kalle Rovanpera, who sits five seconds in front of his British teammate Elfyn Evans as the crews go into their first overnight halt.

Reigning champion Sebastien Ogier suffered a serious accident in pre-event testing which limited his experience of the new rubber, and his performance was further blunted by an unnerving intermittent brake problem.

"I have, like we mentioned, very little experience with these tyres and I needed to get a little bit of a feeling. Then mid-stage suddenly on the brake I had the pedal going completely to the bottom and no brake at all," said Ogier.

"So it was pretty scary moment, luckily uphill, and I could pump enough and stop the car before the corner but, of course, after that my confidence went completely down and I was pumping all the time.

"It happens a couple of times during the stage so the rest of the loop was freaky."

Ogier holds fifth place overnight, behind the Hyundai of Thierry Neuville, joined for the first time by a new co-driver, Martijn Wydaeghe, who was only recruited last week after salary negotiations broke down with Neuville's long-standing partner, Nicolas Gilsoul.

"It was pretty new for Martijn in the car, the cars are going quite fast and we didn't know what to expect to be honest because we had no shakedown and no testing together," said Neuville.

"We were at the finish, that was our main target for today."

One man who missed the 'cautious approach' memo was M-Sport's Teemu Suninen, whose Ford Fiesta WRC was right on the pace of Tanak in the first two sectors of the opening stage.

The flying Finn then got caught out by a 90-degree right-hander, understeering into an earth bank and being pitched into a roll which ended up in the trees halfway down a hillside.

With a broken roll cage resulting from his off, the unhappy Finn will not restart and M-Sport's team principal, Richard Millener, was far from amused.

"I feel most sorry for the team to be honest," Millener seethed. "We worked so hard for the last four weeks to come here, we spent four days testing and that's how we're rewarded.

"It's great to set that kind of time but the intention was to get two cars to the finish and we've not even managed that on one stage.

"So after everything we've done to get here, it's a pretty big kick in the teeth really."

Some measure of cheer was brought to the Cumbrian squad by the performance of its French prodigy, Adrien Fourmaux, in the team's WRC2 entry.

A dominant second stage time saw Fourmaux almost three seconds faster than Gus Greensmith in the team's second full WRC car.

"I had a very clean drive in this stage, I was enjoying a lot," Fourmaux said. "It was very tricky stage, honestly, the grip was changing everywhere, some snow are coming on the road sometimes. It was a proper Monte Carlo stage."

The youngster's time hoisted him to second in WRC2 behind the Skoda of former WRC star Andreas Mikkelsen, who spent 2020 developing this year's Pirelli compounds, and wants to use the second tier category as a springboard back into the big league.

Russian driver Nikolay Gryazin holds third place in WRC2 at the wheel of his privateer VW Polo, just ahead of the man who took his seat for 2021 at Hyundai, Oliver Solberg.

In WRC3, Citroen ended the day with a 1-2-3 lockout for its French drivers Yohan Rossel, Nicolas Ciamin and Yoann Bonato.

COVID-19 curfew regulations must be strictly adhered to, requiring an early finish to each day and precipitating a very early start to the second day's action, with the first stage getting underway at 06:10 local time.

WRC Monte Carlo: Standings after SS2

It was a relatively low-key run around the Villa Reale for the surviving crews, following the drama on Saturday’s closed road stages in the mountains.

Ogier won the first stage of the day with his Toyota teammate Kalle Rovanpera second, which helped to open up the gap to the pursuing Hyundais of Dani Sordo and Ott Tanak.

Early leader Sordo slipped to third behind Tanak, then reasserted himself to win the second stage of the morning with Tanak second and M-Sport’s Esapekka Lappi a strong third.

That made little difference to the overall result, and Ogier only really had to complete the final Power Stage to claim his seventh drivers' world title.

The Power Stage saw Takamoto Katsuta finish fastest in the fourth of the works Toyotas as the rain progressively made conditions more treacherous as the field passed through.

Those maximum bonus points claimed by Katsuta would have been welcomed by Elfyn Evans, who returned after a Saturday crash all but ended his title hopes. The Welshman pressed on a little too hard and had a messy run with the car stalling twice.

Evans ended up third fastest, behind outgoing champion Ott Tanak's Hyundai but ahead of M-Sport's Esapekka Lappi and the Hyundai of Dani Sordo, who cleaned up the last remaining bonus points.

It was to prove an emotional day for Lappi, who announced that this would be his last WRC appearance for the foreseeable future as he crossed the finish line at the end of the day.

Ogier’s run through the stage was far from comfortable, driving through the churned-up gravel on asphalt settings and in teeming rain.

The Frenchman's predicament was made worse when the windscreen wipers failed briefly and he was forced to kick-start them by using the screen wash before the road ahead disappeared entirely from view.

But Ogier held on to take the overall win with a margin of 13.9s from Tanak, enough to secure his seventh crown in eight years with the third different manufacturer.

“It doesn’t sound so bad, I have to say!” he said at the finish.

“Of course we feel for Elfyn also today he has made a very strong season, very consistent, and we had really good fun to fight each other…

“But today, yeah, I’m very happy. Not jumping in the air maybe like crazy because right now we are living in a time that, you know, a lot of people are suffering all over the world and I mean, you have to be decent.”

With second and third place points in the bag, separated by just 1.4s at the finish, Hyundai was able to bring home the manufacturers’ title that team principal Andrea Adamo prioritised above all else in the season.

“It’s complicated. So many images are passing by now,” Adamo said.

“I know how much we have fought, how much pressure we had, what I had to do to try to protect everyone. Everyone has been somehow personally touched [by COVID-19] and this year everyone lost someone, maybe… I also have some friends that are no more with me due to this.”

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In the other classes, WRC refugee Mads Ostberg finished a strong rally in his factory-backed Citroen C3 to beat Skoda’s Pontus Tidemand to the rally win and the title.

“It’s been a crazy year, I mean we are winning the championship as the underdog, the other teams has done more rallies than us, we have the fewest rallies and we have developed the car through the year,” he said.

“It’s for sure something special to be world champion. Even though it’s WRC2, it’s a world championship and we have just won it.”

The WRC3 class saw a 1-2 finish for Skoda as another WRC refugee, Andreas Mikkelsen, headed home rising star Oliver Solberg. The title, however, fell to Hyundai’s Jari Huttunen, whose third place was enough to overhaul Bolivian-British driver Marco Bulcacia Wilkinson.

Sweden’s Tom Kristensson completed the title winners crowned on the event, claiming the Junior WRC title and winning a fully-funded season in WRC3 in an M-Sport Fiesta for 2021.

The opening loop of three stages began with a stage win for Ogier by 8.3 seconds, pushing his Toyota Yaris past Hyundai's overnight pacesetter Dani Sordo to the top of the leaderboard.

Sordo's priority is to defend Hyundai's slender seven-point lead in the manufacturers' championship, and he dug deep to take back five seconds on the next stage but could offer little resistance to Evans, who won the third stage of the day.

While the cars were serviced halfway through the day snow arrived in time for the first stage of the afternoon loop, which saw both M-Sport's Gus Greensmith and Hyundai's Ole Christian Veiby crash heavily at the same corner.

On the next stage, the 11th stage overall, disaster befell Evans when the points leader was left an unwilling passenger as his Yaris WRC careened off the road.

Evans and co-driver Scott Marshall leapt out and made sure to slow down the next man through – title rival Ogier – and to try to prevent any other runners from going off and damaging their stranded car.

"It's crazy, crazy conditions," Toyota team boss Tommi Makinen said. "There are no words. It's all that we want, to be champion. He handled it very well, all the time very well and he did an incredible drive. No question of that."

For his part, Evans was sanguine about potentially leaving the door open for Ogier in this year's title race, stating that he had been feeling comfortable and, if anything, not pushing hard enough early in the stages.

"You have to be there, you have to try, you're not going to win anything by sitting round at the back. I think everybody was having to take some sort of chance," he said. "On my side, I'm really sorry for the team, to be honest, because from the manufacturers' side it was looking really good on Toyota Gazoo Racing's part with both of us moving up the order.

"Obviously now my mistake has really put a spanner in that job as well, so I'm really sorry for the team. We've had a fantastic car, a fantastic crew all year, and here as well, so I'm obviously disappointed for myself but also very sorry and disappointed for them as well."

Another big loser on the stage was M-Sport's early leader Esapekka Lappi, who had elected to take three full snow tyres in his Fiesta but did not receive a message from his team to put them on the car.

"No one told us that it was snowing," growled the Finn. "Our information was that it's just wet so I didn't have my snow tyres on. There's no point [having the right tyres] if you don't put them on."

The following stage was then cancelled after a complete whiteout, which prompted the crews to return to the circuit at Monza for the final run of the day. This was won by Sordo, who closed up to 17.8s behind Ogier who leads ahead of the final day.

With outgoing WRC champion Ott Tanak holding third overnight for Hyundai, and the second surviving Toyota of Kalle Rovanpera almost a minute in arrears, Evans's retirement puts Hyundai in pole position to retain the WRC manufacturers' crown.

In the WRC2 title battle, the two contenders Mads Ostberg and Pontus Tidemand hold the top two positions after Adrien Fourmaux lost minutes to a spin and a puncture. With Tidemand having to drop his worst score, Ostberg must hold on to his 30.9s advantage to take the title.

The WRC3 leaderboard is dominated by the Skodas of guest stars Andreas Mikkelsen and Oliver Solberg, who hold sixth and seventh overall after high attrition among the senior WRC class.

Jari Huttunen, third place WRC3, currently has one hand on the category's crown after his nearest rivals, Kajetan Kajetanowicz and Marco Bulcacia Wilkinson, fell back with various struggles.

Junior WRC points leader Tom Kristensson heads his class by more than two-and-a-half minutes.

Three more stages remain on Sunday's schedule, all of which will be held within the confines of the Villa Reale circuit.

The final stage of the day will also see the points-scoring Power Stage for which both Hyundai's Thierry Neuville and Toyota's Elfyn Evans are expected to return and play a key role in deciding the outcome of the 2020 season.

Both the M-Sport Ford Fiesta WRC of Gus Greensmith/Elliott Edmondson and the Hyundai i20 WRC of Ole Christian Veiby/Jonas Andersson came to grief on the same bend 22 km into the 25 km stage.

Increasing snowfall since the morning loop had clearly made driving conditions considerably more treacherous.

Based on their earlier experience, the first cars into the stage had opted to run on wet weather tyres only, carrying snow tyres as spares. Greensmith arrived at the downhill right-hander with no traction, hitting the guardrail on the outside of the road, which threw his Fiesta into the rock face on the opposite side before rolling back into the woods below.

The Toyota of Takamoto Katsuta made it through the stage safely on wet tyres but then Veiby hit the same piece of guard rail that had collected Greensmith, tearing much of the front end off his car and leaving it broadside across the road.

All four crew members emerged safely from the wreckage.

One driver pleased with the interruption would be Hyundai’s Ott Tanak, currently in fourth place overall but dropping 30 seconds on the Selvino stage before it was red flagged.

Both of the main contenders for this year’s WRC drivers’ title, Frenchman Sebastien Ogier and Britain’s Elfyn Evans, were already in the stage when it was red flagged and will now have to wait until a path is cleared to get out.

The organisers have confirmed that the stage will not restart and that the rally will continue with SS11, the second pass through the 11 km Gerosa stage, after a 10 minute delay. 

Morning loop: Ogier leads Sordo and Evans

Ogier won the first stage of the day by 8.3 seconds to go past Hyundai’s overnight leader Dani Sordo. The Spaniard closed the gap by winning the second stage of the morning, but dropped back on the third, which was won by Toyota’s current drivers’ championship leader, Elfyn Evans.

Following the retirement of Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville during Friday’s stages around the historic Monza circuit, the drivers’ title is effectively a race between the Toyotas of Evans and Ogier. Neuville has not restarted the event and Evans must finish in fourth place or higher to take the title if Ogier wins the rally.

Only the defending WRC champion, Hyundai’s Ott Tanak, has a mathematical chance to beat the Toyota drivers. However, the Estonian needs to score maximum points and for Evans and Ogier to both retire and is focused on his team’s push for the manufacturers’ title.

The morning loop will be repeated by all classes through the afternoon before a final blast around Monza circuit this evening closes the final full day’s action.

The routes laid out around the home of the Italian Grand Prix offered a combination of wet, muddy asphalt and waterlogged gravel beneath persistent driving rain, which challenged even the most experienced crews in the field.

Sordo won the opening stage of the morning but then M-Sport’s Esapekka Lappi gambled and put one of the two sets of snow tyres which were allocated to each car for this event. Lappi’s Fiesta WRC was considerably more sure-footed as a result, hoisting the Finn to the top of the order as the rest of the field struggled to find grip.

The day ended disastrously for Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville. The Belgian arrived with a slender chance of overhauling the Toyotas of Sebastien Ogier and Elfyn Evans in the drivers’ title race, but dropped 20 seconds on the opening stage of the day after spinning and stalling the engine. Although back on the pace after the second stage, Neuville then clouted a chicane with the right front corner and, in his eagerness to get to the finish, drowned the car in a water splash.

This effectively means that the drivers’ championship battle is a two-way fight between the Toyotas of Evans and Ogier. Hyundai’s Ott Tanak needs both men to go out of the rally, while claiming victory and maximum Power Stage points for himself, in order to retain his 2019 drivers’ crown.

Hyundai is therefore set to marshal its forces to try and secure the manufacturers’ crown, holding a slender seven-point advantage over Toyota at the start of the event. To that end, Sordo was able to push hard on the final stage of the day in order to take the overnight lead by 1s from Lappi. The Spaniard will now enjoy the optimum road position of running last for the rest of the rally.

“Today was a really tough day,” said Sordo. “We start quite good, after that we lost a little bit of time in the very muddy places because we didn’t like it a lot – it was very, very tricky. At the end of the day I really tried to push for being in front, I think it’s very important to be in the back (of the running order) and to have a little bit more clean lines.”

In the private battle between the Toyota men, Ogier spun on the first stage of the day while Evans’s car stalled. The Welshman won two of the day's stages and the pair went into the overnight halt with Ogier third and Evans fourth.

“It’s really exactly the same as I expected… very stressful and challenging for the drivers I would say,” said Toyota team boss, Tommi Makinen. “I would say everybody might be a little bit nervous.”

After witnessing Lappi’s advantage on snow tyres, all teams bolted the more extreme rubber on for the afternoon session. As a result of this unexpectedly high demand, the FIA announced that two more snow tyres would be allocated to each car for the weekend.

Saturday sees the field leave the Villa Reale in Monza for two loops of three stages in the Bergamasque Alps, which have seen a deep covering of slushy snow build up in recent days. There is a small chance of more snow overnight but it is more likely to turn to slush under the winter rain, putting a premium on having the most robust tyres possible.

“I think we’ve all utilised the winter tyre today because of the extreme conditions,” said Evans. “I think it’s welcome for everybody that we have a couple of extra tyres. With the conditions as extreme as they are at the moment ideally we would need some studs but, you know, we don’t have them and therefore we have to manage with the snow tyre.”

The WRC's final event of 2020 is underway after an initial 4.3km blast round the Villa Reale at Monza, with six-time champion Ogier taking his Toyota Yaris to an early lead over Hyundai's Neuville.

Both Ogier and Neuville have a mountain to climb if they are to overhaul Toyota's championship leader Elfyn Evans to claim this year's WRC drivers' title, but the Welshman gave himself a couple of scares throughout the day.

A spin on the morning shakedown knocked his exhaust out of alignment, then he survived a narrow escape turning into the infield section on his first timed run, putting him 2.7 seconds off the pace in fourth place.

Whoever wins the rally, Evans needs only to maintain fourth place to take the title while Ogier, Neuville and third-fastest driver Ott Tanak require anything from good luck to a miracle in order to keep their title hopes alive.

The only incident of the day befell the third Toyota of Takamoto Katsuta, who arrived at a grassy hairpin and could do nothing to stop the front of his car from clouting the retaining wall to the Grand Prix circuit.

M-Sport's asphalt expert Adrien Fourmaux took the early lead in WRC2, just 0.1s clear of Mads Ostberg's Citroen with championship leader Pontus Tidemand's Skoda fourth, behind Czech veteran Jan Kopecky in the sister Fabia.

As is often the case, the WRC3 runners were faster than the WRC2s, with title contender Jari Huttunen's Hyundai fastest from WRC veteran Andreas Mikkelsen's Skoda, Oliver Solberg holding third in his Skoda.

Five more stages will be completed around the Monza circuit on Friday, utilising all of the access roads and the historic banking to give a day total of 59.61 competitive kilometres.

After the rest of the field has played its part through the higgledy-piggledy season so far, we head to Monza with our final four contenders for glory. We have a boy next door with special powers, a bespectacled wisecracking genius, a brooding outsider and a colossus who already has six precious gems tucked away in his armoury.

Elfyn Evans, Scott Martin, Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT Toyota Yaris WRC

Photo by: McKlein / Motorsport Images

In fairness, Elfyn 'Spider-Man' Evans already has one hand on the trophy and it would be a brave soul who might bet against him getting both on it at the finish.

Evans has finished no lower than fourth this year. His position atop the table comes in no small part from being the only front-runner to have finished every round of the season so far - he's also the only driver to win more than one rally this year, in Sweden and Sardinia - and another fourth place in Monza would seal the deal.

There's no need to go crazy, and with only four cars capable of finishing in front of him under normal circumstances (and one of them being a Toyota team-mate, Kalle Rovanpera, who is out of the title fight), that relieves a little pressure.

Sébastien Ogier, Julien Ingrassia, Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT Toyota Yaris WRC

Photo by: Toyota Racing

It's the other Toyota that Evans will be focused on: that of the six-time champion, Thanos himself, Sebastien Ogier, sitting 14 points in arrears with 30 points left on the table.

The 2020 season was supposed to be a swansong for this colossus of the post-Loeb WRC. At the start of the year he had his mission laid out to win one more title with one more manufacturer, added to those won with Volkswagen and M-Sport, before hanging up his helmet.

Given the trials and tribulations brought about by COVID-19, Ogier has deferred his pipe and slippers for another year in order to take another tilt at what will hopefully be a more traditional season in 2021 - but does this mean that he will be taking it easy in Monza? Not a bit of it. Even though Ogier has remarked that the reduced number of rallies will mean the 2020 title means less than in previous years, you can expect his Yaris to be standing on its doorhandles, because there isn't a more competitive man in motorsport.

Thierry Neuville, Nicolas Gilsoul, Hyundai Motorsport Hyundai i20 Coupe WRC

Photo by: Fabien Dufour / Hyundai Motorsport

If there's a party with rally cars going on, then usually you will find the WRC's answer to Tony Stark in the thick of it: Thierry Neuville. The Belgian is no stranger to Monza's event, with second place finishes in 2015 and 2019.Like his title rival Evans, however, Ogier lacks any prior experience of what little tricks Monza has up its sleeve for the unwary. The business-like Frenchman tends to wrap up the WRC season and head off until Monte for some well-earned rest, rather than join in the fun and games of close season bunfights such as Monza's traditionally celebrity-heavy event.

Neuville has been the fastest man in the WRC this year, setting more fastest stage times than Evans and Ogier combined. He's entertained us all by tap-dancing his Hyundai i20 to the very limit and yet, just like Iron Man, there have been some body blows delivered to his chances of celebrating a happy conclusion to the story.

A disastrous run of luck through Sweden (at sea on set-up), Mexico (electrical failure), and Estonia (suspension damage), have left him with only the faint hope of Evans retiring and Ogier somehow being able to finish no higher than fourth.

One way or another, it seems that Neuville's run of five consecutive runner-up places in the WRC standings is likely to come to an end, and it will take a miracle for him to make that a first championship win rather than battling team-mate Ott Tanak for the bronze.

Ott Tänak, Martin Järveoja, Hyundai Motorsport Hyundai i20 Coupe WRC

Photo by: McKlein / Motorsport Images

And so we come to Tanak. He's still mathematically in the hunt, but the permutations basically require him to win the rally and the Power Stage while the other three contenders all drop out.

His season began with that leap into the void off the side of the Alps, which cost him seat time in his new surroundings at Hyundai. Things improved rapidly thereafter, getting his eye in through Sweden and Mexico and looking set to snatch victory at any moment - until we all had to stay at home.

His euphoric victory at home in Estonia brought the WRC back to life with considerable style, but disappointment followed in Turkey (steering), and Italy (suspension), that left his chances of retaining his 2019 drivers' title all-but gone.

In the role of Hawkeye among our superhero final four, he has a decisive part to play in the final encounter. But there's quite a high likelihood that in the calm after the storm, he will counting the cost of what it took to get us all here and looking forward to better days ahead.

Whatever the outcome of the all-star event, there are still all those supporting characters who have a part to play.

Dani Sordo, Carlos Del Barrio, Hyundai Motorsport Hyundai i20 Coupe WRC

Photo by: McKlein / Motorsport Images

Dani Sordo gets another run in the third Hyundai at an event which he knows well, having two overall wins, two class wins and a second place to his credit. Having delivered a decisive victory in Sardinia towards retaining the manufacturers' crown, the Spaniard is on a high with his boss's backing to do all that he can to bring the silverware back to Seoul.

Rovanpera in the third Toyota has a role to play in queering the pitch of the Hyundais while equally keeping out of the way of his team-mates in the final showdown. It's a big job for young shoulders, but he has ample pace and confidence to be a major factor.

And finally we have M-Sport, the Guardians of the Galaxy who travel to the very ends of the universe to keep the sport going from the grassroots to the WRC itself. Finnish stars Esapekka Lappi and Teemu Suninen have shown flashes of supreme pace this year when they do not allow their heads to drop and the random factor of Monza's event could suit them. Gus Greensmith will be out of his comfort zone, but nobody will be urging themselves onward with the same gusto as the young Englishman.

Esapekka Lappi, Janne Ferm, M-Sport Ford WRT Ford Fiesta WRC

Photo by: M-Sport

M-Sport no longer has a hope in the manufacturers' championship, but the outcome of the battle of the big six works cars will mean everything in the boardrooms of Toyota and Hyundai.

Meanwhile, while the big league enjoys its all-star superhero-filled grand finale we can also look forward to plenty more intrigue in the lower leagues as we reach the deciding round of WRC2 and WRC3.

Pontus Tidemand, Patrik Barth, Toksport WRT Skoda Fabia R5

Photo by: McKlein / Motorsport Images

It's been the hare and the tortoise for our two WRC refugees in WRC2 this year. Veteran Mads Ostberg has enjoyed factory support for his Citroen C3 and won every round that he started - up until the last one, in Sardinia, where an opening day spent running with only rear-wheel-drive put his finely-balanced season under threat.

Ostberg's unhappiness offered some light at the end of the tunnel to Sweden's Pontus Tidemand, who has been forced to trundle gently through each event in his virgin white Skoda Fabia, picking up podiums wherever Ostberg has been present and only ever going as fast as he must in order to minimise wear and tear to his car and budget.

Joining them in Milan will be young Frenchman Adrien Fourmaux at the end of a hugely impressive learning year at M-Sport. Fourmaux will doubtless be happy to finish the season on his preferred asphalt, as will the guest star in WRC2 for the weekend, Skoda's veteran campaigner Jan Kopecky.

In WRC3, Bolivia's Marco Bulacia Wilkinson holds a two-point lead in his Citroen C3 over the Hyundai i20 of Jari Huttinen in what has been a hugely entertaining and wide-open contest among the young guns throughout the season.

Joining them will be a phalanx of talent, chief among which will be Oliver Solberg in his Skoda Fabia - the youngster doubtless thrilled to be playing to a decent sized crowd at Monza. And, while sparks fly amongst the youngsters, don't discount the hunger for victory that veteran Andreas Mikkelsen brings as he seeks to gain a top-class seat in 2021 in another WRC3 Fabia.

Franco Morbidelli, WithU Motorsport Hyundai i20 R5

Photo by: WithU Motorsport

MotoGP star Valentino Rossi, seven-time winner of Monza's rally event in previous years, will not be present but he will be represented by his motorcycling protege Franco Morbidelli. Another name to watch will be World RX regular Niclas Gronholm, son of double champion Marcus, at the wheel of his Skoda, and rally debutante Maro Engel, the GT ace making a guest outing with the Toksport WRT outfit that runs his ADAC GT Masters Mercedes.

It is a curious end to a curious season in many ways, but the prospect of this short but sweet finale promises to end 2020 on blizzard of excitement, which is something that the entire rally community worldwide thoroughly deserves.

Cooler conditions greeted the runners on Sunday morning, an overcast sky dropping ambient temperatures by 10C from the first two days. A loop of just two stages awaited, 14.06 km Cala Flumini and 6.89 km Sassari, which was to be run twice through the day.

Toyota’s six-time world champion Sebastien Ogier had done enough on Saturday’s final stages to split the Hyundais of leader Sordo and Neuville. Ogier pipped Neuville to win the first stage of the day by two tenths of a second, while Sordo struggled and dropped 12.1s.

Championship leader Elfyn Evans (Toyota) was 4.8s further back but he did enough to safeguard his fourth place from attack by M-Sport’s Teemu Suninen.

Neuville lit the blue touch paper on the second stage, reclaiming 1.6s from Ogier before the service halt. When the action restarted, the Frenchman then took back those lost 1.6s while Sordo struggled again, allowing his overall lead – which had been as high as 38s – to erode to just 9.2s.

The second run through the beachside stage at Sassari would seal the result, and with it would come the bonus Power Stage points for the top five times. This was the moment in which defending champion Ott Tanak played his joker to perfection.

After his Hyundai lost two minutes due to unspecified technical difficulties on the first day, Tanak could finish no higher than sixth overall.

Tanak set an unbeatable Power Stage time to claim five extra points that keep him in the title race with two events remaining. Neuville went faster on the split times but then began bouncing off the scenery in his rush to get to the finish.

Ogier was 3.4s slower than Tanak and handed second place overall back to Neuville.

Sordo was the last man into the stage and he didn’t challenge the fastest times, but did enough to claim his second consecutive victory in Sardinia by 5.1s.

In WRC2, Sweden’s Pontus Tidemand turned the championship tide in his favour with another cautious outing in his Skoda Fabia.

In the WRC point standings, Evans remains 14 points clear of Toyota teammate Ogier as the series moves to asphalt rallies for the remainder of the schedule. Neuville has climbed up to third, 10 points further back, with Tanak hanging on right behind him.

Rally results:

Ogier, third overnight, began to reel in M-Sport’s Teemu Suninen whose Ford Fiesta held a fragile overnight hold on second place. The Cumbrian squad started the day’s running without the second Fiesta of Esapekka Lappi, which was unable to restart after losing all the water from its engine on Friday morning.

Further heartbreak was to follow for M-Sport as British youngster Gus Greensmith’s impressive run in Sardinia ended on Saturday when a rock knocked his alternator belt off in the middle of the third stage. He was able to replace the belt on the following road section but his battery was too far gone to be revived.

Suninen then suffered an issue with the centre differential that prevented him from using the handbrake to negotiate the many Sardinian hairpins. This in turn accelerated his slide down the order and the Finn ended the first loop of stages in fifth place.

Rally leader Sordo won the second stage of the day and Ogier won the third but Thierry Neuville, Hyundai’s only realistic contender for this year’s drivers’ title, closed in on Ogier throughout the morning. When Neuville won the fourth and final stage of the morning loop he leapt into second overall.

One name was missing after the morning’s second stage, that of Kalle Rovanpera. Toyota’s 20-year-old charger had been complaining that his car was loose and clipped a tree which spun him through 180 degrees, whereupon another tree tore the right rear corner off his Yaris.

After a lengthy afternoon service halt, the second loop of two stages repeated those run on Friday afternoon.

Championship leader Evans, in fourth place, suggested that the surface might have been ‘polished up’ by rally traffic moving in and out overnight. With his British Rally Championship-winning father Gwyndaf on the gravel crew, Elfyn usually gets good information.

So it was that the Toyota runners elected to mix hard and medium tyre compounds while the Hyundais of Sordo and Neuville went for mediums all round. These choices were to prove decisive.

Ogier won both of the afternoon’s stages and hoisted himself back into second place ahead of Neuville. The Belgian’s softer rubber was worn out and he was fortunate to escape after clouting a hay bale after running wide as he attempted to negotiate a narrow bridge.

“I tried very hard to be honest but it looks like they had a little bit more speed than us,” Neuville said.

“Maybe the tyres also made the difference and I lost maybe 1.5-2 seconds on the bridge where I just was a little bit too late on the brakes but that’s… when you’re pushing to the maximum… it’s happen.”

Despite Ogier’s charge, Sordo still holds a 27 second advantage heading in to the final day. Like Neuville, his Hyundai’s tyres were ravaged by the afternoon stages.

“My tyres are completely destroyed,” said the Spaniard. “So, I was trying to manage a little bit for the end of the stage but seven kilometres before the end I started to feel that I was understeering too much so I started to take it a little bit careful.”

Ogier’s presence in between Sordo and Neuville at the start of the final day could be a blessing in disguise for Hyundai team principal, Andrea Adamo.

With only Neuville in a position to challenge Evans and Ogier for the 2020 WRC drivers’ title, the prospect of having to order Sordo, on a part-time schedule for the team, to hand over his well-deserved lead would not be popular. For his part, Adamo just wants to see a maximum score for the manufacturers’ championship and is less concerned about his drivers.

“I have, in top of my mind, I have just in this moment the manufacturers’ standing and not the drivers’ standing,” Adamo said. “It will be difficult to tell Dani to go slow.”

Standings after Day 2:

The Finn, who has previously won the WRC3 and WRC2 categories on Sardinia's rough-hewn stages, took full advantage of the clear path that his road position granted to claim the lead by 12.4 seconds.

Sordo, as one of the three drivers rotating through the season in Hyundai's third car, also enjoyed a favourable road position and won the second stage convincingly.

At the greatest disadvantage throughout the opening day was Toyota's current championship leader, Elfyn Evans. Despite the handicap of being first on the road, the Briton still managed to power his Yaris WRC through to set the fastest time on stage three.

The morning loop ended with a second run through the same stage that had opened the rally, but this time Suninen was unable to repeat his earlier performance. Sordo's time afforded him a commanding 7.5 second lead as the field paused for its service halt.

Many of the mechanics and engineers had a busy time in service, not least those tending to the Hyundai of defending champion Ott Tanak.

The Estonian lost almost two minutes throughout the morning as a mystery affliction affected the front end of his i20 WRC, requiring the team to rebuild his car.

Two potential front-runners were taken out of the battle early on when Esapekka Lappi's M-Sport Fiesta suffered engine failure on Stage 2 and the third Toyota of Takamoto Katsuta rolled on Stage 4. Both are expected to restart on Saturday but will play no part in the lead battle.

Two more stages were run after the service halt, with Sordo winning both convincingly to extend his overall lead. Thierry Neuville had threatened to go fastest on Stage 5 until his i20 WRC cut out in the middle of a hairpin and agonising seconds were lost before it re-fired.

Neuville's time was still fifth fastest behind those of Sordo, the recovering Tanak, Suninen and a hugely impressive fourth fastest time for Hyundai 'B-team' driver, Pierre-Louis Loubet, in only his third WRC start.

On the final stage of the day, Neuville's stalling issue reappeared but he still leapfrogged six-time champion Sebastien Ogier's Toyota for third place.

Day 2 will see the road order changed and event leader Sordo will be forced to clear a path for the rest of the field, which tempered his enthusiasm after a commanding performance.

Toyota's Kalle Rovanpera, another outside contender for the drivers' title, suffered a string of mechanical issues that allowed Tanak to pass him for eighth on the final stage of the day.

Tenth place overall is held by WRC3 leader Oliver Solberg's Skoda Fabia, with all of the top five runners in the junior category completing the day in front of WRC2 class leader Pontus Tidemand.

Results after Day 1:

Loeb’s struggle to recapture lost time could not compare with that of his Hyundai team-mate Ott Tanak, however, who suffered a steering failure mid-way through the same stage and went out of the event.

WRC points leader Sebastien Ogier capitalised for Toyota, winning the first two stages of the day and taking the overall lead of the event. Neuville, who had been complaining about his car’s performance on the opening tests, then attacked on the final stage of the morning loop and was able to peg the Frenchman’s advantage back to just 1.6 seconds.

The lead battle between Ogier and Neuville pulled clear of a three-car battle for third between Loeb and the Toyotas of Elfyn Evans and Kalle Rovanpera, in which tyre management was the primary concern over outright pace. Evans was content to drive at nine-tenths and his consistency kept him in front of the podium battle for much of the day, while still more drama unfolded after spectators made their way out into the countryside.

Due to Covid-19 measures, Rally Turkey is officially taking place without spectators even though large gatherings can be seen in the hills looking down on certain sections of the route. Some individuals tried to get a closer look and were caught out by the FIA’s new safety protocols but the delay was relatively short-lived.

The afternoon loop brought further drama as Ogier began to suffer transmission issues and a puncture while Neuville hustled a Hyundai that was much more to his liking to claim an advantage of almost 22s.

Ogier was back on the pace for the next stage and surrendered just 0.2s to the Belgian, who then accelerated to end the day with a 33.2s lead to take into the final day.

“We worked on the setup and I must say I was much more happy with the car this afternoon, especially in the rough sections, we were able to get what we were looking for,” said Neuville. “Maybe not 100% yet but anyhow we went in the right direction so the engineer was pushing me for some changes and finally it worked well so I’m happy with that and pleased with the job that the team has done.”

Loeb also got back on the pace and beat Neuville to win the final stage of the day by 0.9s, equalling Ogier’s overall time for the event and sharing second place with his former nemesis on the overnight leaderboard.

“It’s not too bad!” the nine-time champion beamed before heading back for the overnight service halt.

Four stages remain on the itinerary for the closing day of the rally and both Neuville and Hyundai’s team principal Andrea Adamo must hope that Loeb can edge in front of Ogier’s Toyota to maximise the manufacturer and driver points advantage.

“Obviously nothing is done, tomorrow is the roughest stage of the rally,” said Neuville. “I mean, we have seen Ogier getting a puncture close to the end of the stage so he continue pushing and he’s still in P2. I’m going to try to do my best tomorrow and hopefully we’re going to survive.”

Although he is not a factor in the pitched battle for this year’s drivers’ title, Loeb has won in Turkey on three previous occasions and his presence is intended to maximise Hyundai's bid to secure the WRC manufacturers’ crown.

Just 1.2 seconds behind Loeb lies his Hyundai teammate Thierry Neuville, who arrived in Turkey with his title hopes in the balance after retiring from the previous two events in Mexico and Estonia.

Neuville won the opening 13.9km stage at Icmeler from Loeb by a margin of 3.3-seconds with the sister Hyundai of Ott Tanak, winner of Rally Estonia two weeks ago, just 0.2 seconds further back.

Then came the second stage, an 11.3 km run through Gokce, in which the dense clouds of dust thrown up by the WRC runners failed to clear along much of the route and penalised many drivers as they struggled with severe visibility issues.

Running first on the road with no such problems was Toyota’s current leader in the drivers’ standings, six-time WRC champion Sebastien Ogier. The French star had been sitting in fifth place after sweeping the road on the first stage but vaulted up the order into third overall.

Ogier had been 1.2 seconds behind his British teammate Elfyn Evans but was able to jump ahead after his run, while the third Toyota of teenager Kalle Rovanpera jum[ed up the order from seventh to fifth.

The biggest loser on the stage was Tanak, who emerged from the hanging dust in seventh place overall after losing ground to the Toyotas and the M-Sport Ford of Teemu Suninen.

“It feels really nice; I didn't expect to be leading tonight!” Loeb said as the cars came in to service. “At the end I tried to push, I had precise notes so I was able to do it.”

The shortened rally itinerary, being held with no spectators present, will resume for two loops of the same three stages on Saturday and begin with the 32km epic of Yesilbelde. As was the case in Estonia, the running order will be reversed based upon the positions at the midday service and on this, the roughest and most rock-strewn event on the calendar.

The Toyota and Hyundai teams can be expected to play out a highly strategic battle on Saturday to achieve the best road position.

Positions after SS2:

Helped by three bonus points for the third-fastest time in the Power Stage, It means Tanak is now within 13 points of Ogier's lead with only Rally Turkey, Rally Italy and the Ypres Rally left on the 2020 WRC schedule.

Ogier has a buffer of nine points over Toyota teammate Elfyn Evans was second-fastest on the Power Stage and fourth overall. Power Stage winner Kalle Rovanpera completed the top five.

With first and second place held comfortably overnight, Tanak and Breen merely had to minimise the risks in the six final stages and they successfully kept drama to a minimum – bar one heart-stopping moment for Tanak, when a rut almost sent him into a ditch.

Disaster was averted at the cost of only a couple of tenths of a second and Tanak kept his stranglehold even as the pursuing Toyotas were able to win every stage of the day. Evans took the first stage of the morning, Ogier would claim two and Rovanpera ended up winning three, including the Power Stage.

The only fly in Toyota’s ointment on the closing day was the loss of its fourth car, wheeled by Takamoto Katsuta, when he rolled out of sixth place. 

As he attempted to launch into the stage, however, something was clearly amiss with the car’s electronics and the i20 limped through to the finish. His hopes of leading Hyundai’s charge in the three remaining rallies of 2020 would appear to be bleak.

Hyundai also lost its fourth car, a 2019-spec i20 WRC entered for reigning WRC2 champion Pierre-Louis Loubet, when his steering gave out on the second stage of the day.

M-Sport was the benefactor and gained valuable points as Teemu Suninen and Esapekka Lappi finished in sixth and seventh respectively, with Gus Greensmith coming home eighth.

In WRC2 the Citroen of Mads Ostberg was never really challenged and was followed on to the podium by M-Sport’s French hopeful Adrien Fourmaux. Hyundai's Nikolai Gryazin had been set to take the runner-up spot until he suffered a puncture on the final stage, allowing Fourmaux through and handing third place to Swedish privateer Pontus Tidemand.

Finishing in front of all the WRC2 runners however, in ninth overall was Oliver Solberg, claiming his first WRC3 victory in emphatic style. 

Rally results (top 10):

As the rally proper began early on Saturday morning, overnight leader Esapekka Lappi’s Ford Fiesta WRC was quickly engulfed. On the opening 21km stage, Toyota’s rookie sensation Kalle Rovanpera rocketed to the top of the order while Lappi tumbled to seventh.

Rovanpera then hit trouble on the next stage when a right-rear puncture took a slice out of his bodywork, knocking off several of the car’s all-important aerodynamic components. This incident dropped him to eighth and handed the advantage to the Hyundai men led by defending world champion, Tanak. 

In front of a hugely passionate home crowd, Tanak delivered a scintillating performance to take the overall lead. By the end of the third stage of the day it was Hyundai 1-2-3, with Breen secure in second place and Thierry Neuville climbing to third. 

Behind the Hyundais, the four Toyota Yaris WRCs sat in line astern with Sebastien Ogier claiming a win on SS5 to keep ahead of Elfyn Evans, an impressive Takamoto Katsuta and young Rovanpera as he fought to regain lost ground.

The starting order was switched during the lunchtime service, giving points leader Ogier a break from sweeping the stages. Although the Frenchman was immediately able to add a stage win on SS7, Toyota’s challenge was blunted when both he and Evans were delayed by tyre problems through the afternoon. 

Rally leader Tanak remained in imperious form and a superb performance from Craig Breen saw him take wins on both SS9 and SS10, closing up on Tanak and putting a disheartening gap between them and the pursuing Toyotas.

Disaster struck third Hyundai of Thierry Neuville, however. The Belgian began to close on Breen and then slid wide on SS7, knocking the right rear corner off his i20 WRC.

As the second such retirement in a row for Neuville, winner of the season-opening Monte Carlo Rally, his chances in the drivers’ championship of this truncated 2020 season have taken a potentially terminal blow. 

Tanak therefore holds a commanding position going into the final day, with part-time teammate Breen performing a superb job of riding shotgun.

“I been pushing couple of stages, you know, just to make some gap but this afternoon, especially the middle stages, got really rough so I know I can’t risk anything,” Tanak said after the final stage of the day. “I need to definitely come through it if I want to win – or to fight – for the championship,” he added.

The WRC2 battle saw a wild game of snakes and ladders early in the day as overnight leader Mads Ostberg lost half a minute to a puncture in his Citroen C3. The Hyundai juniors also hit trouble as Ole Christian Veiby went out after damaging his engine on one of the jumps and then suffering a double puncture, while Nikolai Gryazin was delayed by several wild moments.

With the Skoda of Swedish privateer Pontus Tidemand picking its way carefully through the stages to avoid costly damage, the WRC2 leader’s baton was briefly passed to the Ford Fiesta of Frenchman Adrien Fourmaux. Once the front-runners were back up to speed, however, Ostberg thundered back to the lead and held a 38-second advantage over Gryazin at the end of the day.

Right behind Ostberg in the overall standings at the overnight halt lies Oliver Solberg’s VW Polo at the front of the WRC3 class, holding an 18-second advantage over local man Egon Kaur’s Skoda, while in the Junior WRC Latvia’s Martins Sesks leads Sami Pajari.

Rally standings after SS11:

Britain’s Elfyn Evans, who led the drivers’ standings briefly back in March after taking victory in Sweden, guided the second Toyota through with even greater circumspection, his time more than half a second off the Frenchman’s run.

Thierry Neuville then showed why the softly-softly approach might well have been prudent. This year’s Monte Carlo Rally winner fired his Hyundai I20 Coupe WRC wide on the second corner of the rally and spent most of his time looking through the side windows as he slithered to the finish 1.5 seconds adrift of Ogier’s target time.

Several other front-runners found that Tartu vald presented a serious challenge, with the hefty straw bales claiming several expensive chunks of aerodynamic equipment as the evening progressed. Among those who sent the hay flying was the reigning world champion, Estonia’s own Ott Tanak, who still drew the biggest cheers of the night as he ended up just 0.1s off the lead.

However, as the stage bedded in, the man who took fullest advantage was M-Sport’s Esapekka Lappi, the popular Finn shading Ogier’s time in the Fiesta WRC by hundredths of a second. After his car was destroyed by fire at the last event in Mexico, and in a difficult financial climate for his team, Lappi was equally surprised and delighted to have set the pace.

“It didn’t feel that good to be honest,” he said. “Well this is not really what the stages will be tomorrow but we had a good shakedown, a good opening stage… looking forward!”

With Lappi and Ogier heading Tanak at the top of the timesheet, Irishman Craig Breen, a former winner of Rally Estonia, threw down his marker to hold fourth overnight in one of his outings in the works Hyundai squad, sitting 0.2s ahead of Evans.

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In the WRC2 category, current points leader Mads Ostberg stamped his authority on the other junior runners, setting sixth fastest time overall at the wheel of his Citroen C3 R5.

“The nerves are quite big,” the Norwegian said. “It’s been a long wait to feel the importance of a WRC event again.  To be honest I quite enjoy that – it’s nice to be a bit shaky again!”

Ostberg’s closest challenger was Swedish driver Pontus Tidemand, winner of the previous round in Mexico, who sat 0.2s behind in ninth overall in his Skoda R5.

Back in March, Tidemand was uncertain of continuing on the globe-trotting championship trail due to an absence of funds but the post-Covid calendar has greatly reduced travel budgets and his sponsor-less presence has guaranteed a strong battle with Ostberg in the days ahead.

The rally restarts on Saturday morning with the 21km Prangli stage starting at 07:40, opening a busy 11-stage itinerary for the day.

Stage 1 results:

The home-grown hero for this weekend’s action, at an event put together in just two months as part of the much-altered WRC calendar for this year, made only three of a maximum five passes through the stage.

Clearly the work that was being done by his team in the interim had the car dialled in nicely for the rally proper, which opens with a ceremonial start at 18:00 this evening, and the opening stage an hour later.

In Tanak’s wake came the rest of the WRC field headed by the M-Sport Ford Fiesta WRC of Finland’s Esapekka Lappi, who clocked a 2.58.3 on his fifth and final run.

Just 0.1 seconds behind the Finn came Toyota’s teenage sensation Kalle Rovanpera, who is keen to pick up his debut season with the same pace and confidence that he showed when the season paused almost six months ago.

Rovanpera was just 0.1s in front of seven-time world champion Sebastien Ogier in the sister Toyota with Thierry Neuville fifth, another 0.1s behind for Hyundai.

Britain’s Elfyn Evans, who led the championship prior to the previous round in Mexico, set the sixth fastest time in his Toyota Yaris, just 0.2s faster than Irishman Craig Breen, who is at the wheel of the third works Hyundai this weekend.

In the WRC2 class, Norwegian veteran Mads Ostberg set the pace, clocking the 12th-fastest time at the wheel of his Citroen C3, almost a second clear of the Hyundai pedalled by Ole Christian Veiby.

The proposed formula, named Rally 1, sits at the top of a revised five-tier technical pyramid intended to increase accessibility for aspiring drivers and teams in national-level competition, while increasing sustainability and reducing cost in the WRC.

This will mean that all Rally 1-era WRC cars will share a common crash structure that will be centrally developed by the FIA, and a common hybrid system to make inroads on the series' sustainability push.

There will also be new limits enforced across the car's aerodynamic and mechanical components to prevent high-spending manufacturer teams from engineering an advantage over their competitors.

The FIA presented Rally 1 as a way to sustain and grow manufacturer support, stating that: 'A concept of scaling will allow for more cars to fit the regulations to maximise participation.'

But Neuville expressed his frustration over the proposed ruleset, suggesting it undoes all of the work that the WRC has done to improve its spectacle.

"I asked my boss straight away if he agreed on this shit, but, it seems like that," Neuville said.

"Cost reducing, making the car technically less interesting - putting five gears back, no centre diff, less aerodynamic, less wheel travel on the suspension - I don't see the point, to be honest.

"From three years ago we decide to pep up the WRC and give the WRC a new life and it worked very well to be honest. From the promotion side, from the spectacle side - and now we go back to R5-plus.

"I don't know if I'm really interested to drive these cars but we're going to find out."

Team bosses defend proposals

When questioned, Neuville's boss, Hyundai Motorsport director Andrea Adamo, was emphatic in his support for Rally 1.

"It's very clear: the rules has been done between the FIA and manufacturers, so what is there has been agreed," Adamo said.

Speaking on behalf of M-Sport, team principal Richard Millener said that he had anticipated such a reaction, particularly among the more experienced crews.

"Without wishing to sound rude to any of the drivers, they aren't the ones funding the programme," said Millener.

"At the moment, there are hydraulic systems on the car that cost around £40,000 and we can still hold exciting rallies and have a product that people want to watch and participate in without that level of cost.

"When you look at where the manufacturers are competing at the moment - principally Formula E - it's all provided for you: you just put your badge on it and go.

"We don't want to go down that path, the WRC will always require specialist engineering and the manufacturer's showroom product, but keeping our series accessible to reach that target of four or five manufacturers, although it is not going to happen in the next two or three years, is the right way to go."

in order to give teams and media time to beat the forthcoming travel shutdown in the USA and Europe.

In what transpired to be the final loop of the rally, Ogier maintained sufficient speed on each of the six special stages to take the win by a margin of 27.8 seconds from the Hyundai of 2019 world champion Ott Tanak.

“It's definitely a strange victory for me this weekend," said Ogier, who had expressed reservations ahead of the weekend about Rally Mexico proceeding at a time when most other motorsport has been placed on hold in light of the global coronavirus pandemic.

"I did not want to race basically and I've been convinced to do it and I've done my job, but for me protecting human life should go first and I hope we didn't bring any harm here to our friends in Mexico.

"I think we've done a good race, we've done two good days without any mistakes, pushed when we needed and tried to control the race now up to the end. Mexico remains a big challenge every time and it's still some good points for the championship today."

In a hard-fought battle for the runner-up position, Tanak overcame steely resistance from M-Sport driver Teemu Suninen, whose performance at the wheel of his Ford Fiesta WRC was one of the event’s highlights.

Behind these three podium finishers, the Toyotas of Britain’s Elfyn Evans and rising star Kalle Rovanpera finished in fourth and fifth respectively, after battling through today’s stages from less-than-favourable road positions.

Young British driver Gus Greensmith was the sixth WRC car home at the end of only his fifth outing in the sport’s top echelon for M-Sport, albeit behind three R5 cars.

The final classified finisher in the premier class was Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville, who restarted under Rally 2 regulations after an electrical failure late on Friday.

After a convenient delay led to a more favourable road position for the majority of Saturday’s running, the Belgian duly won five of the remaining eight stages, ceding just three fastest times to teammate Tanak, but could only recover to 14th overall.

In WRC2, Sweden’s Pontus Tidemund just got his lone Skoda Fabia R5 across the line 2.97 seconds ahead of his closest rival, Hyundai’s Russian driver Nikolai Gryazin. WRC3 honours fell to Bolivia’s Marco Bulacia Wilkinson at the wheel of his Citroen C3 R5.

With the next round, Rally Argentina, postponed in response to the coronavirus pandemic, the next scheduled event will be Rally Portugal in May unless the global health situation continues to impact the WRC calendar.

Ogier's victory puts him into the lead of the drivers' standings on 62 points, eight clear of Toyota teammate Evans and 20 ahead of Neuville.

Standings after SS21:

1	17	Sebastien Ogier	Toyota	2:47:47.6
2	8	Ott Tanak	Hyundai	+27.8
3	3	Teemu Suninen	Ford	+37.9
4	33	Elfyn Evans	Toyota	+1:13.4
5	69	Kalle Rovanpera	Toyota	+2:20.5
6	22	Pontus Tidemand	Skoda	+10:29.3
7	20	Nikolai Gryazin	Hyundai	+12:27.0
8	27	Marco Bulacia	Citroen	+13:37.5
9	44	Gus Greensmith	Ford	+13:56.5
10	21	Ole Christian Veiby	Hyundai	+15:32.2

Championship standings after three rounds:

1	Sebastien Ogier	Toyota	62
2	Elfyn Evans	Toyota	54
3	Thierry Neuville	Hyundai	42
4	Kalle Rovanpera	Toyota	40
5	Ott Tanak	Hyundai	38
6	Teemu Suninen	Ford	26

At this point the Belgian slowed for what were understood to be technical issues. The delay forced him to drop back from the first starting position and line up in fourth on the road at the start of the day’s second timed test at Alfaro.

Another scintillating Neuville performance on the third stage of the day at Derramadero was stymied by a quick trip down an escape road – albeit costing less time than might have been lost by running first on the road. Tanak claimed that stage victory.

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This had left only M-Sport youngster Gus Greensmith’s Fiesta to clear a path in front of them and neither of the Yaris drivers were able to attack in the manner that they had hoped.

Timo Suninen’s M-Sport Fiesta remains in second place but has dropped more than 10 seconds off leader Ogier. The Finn now finds the third-placed Hyundai of defending champion Tanak, only 6.6 seconds in arrears.

If the Estonian is able to maintain that sort of pace until tomorrow’s finish, and if teammate Neuville continues as the joker in the pack, then Ogier will have to summon all his famous composure to claim a record-equalling sixth Rally Mexico win.

The Frenchman’s Toyota teammate, joint championship leader Elfyn Evans, was hobbled by running first on the road and being forced to sweep the stages for everyone else behind him.

In the third Toyota Yaris WRC, Kalle Rovanpera’s performance was tempered by a puncture, although he won the final stage of the day on the streets of Leon.

It was a day to forget for Hyundai. Reigning champion Ott Tanak was hampered by a 45-second deficit that resulted from going off the road in the morning, while Thierry Neuville’s engine expired in the late afternoon - ending a swashbuckling attempt to defy his poor road position.

The third Hyundai of Dani Sordo meanwhile went out with terminal engine problems on the second pass through El Chocolate.

All of which leaves the M-Sport Ford Fiesta of Teemu Suninen in second place at the overnight halt and despite the chaos it is a position earned on merit.

Four top-three stage times and consistent top-five pace throughout the first eleven stages have allowed the Finn to keep Ogier in his sights amid the excitement.

The biggest drama of the afternoon befell Suninen’s fellow countryman Esapekka Lappi in the sister M-Sport car. After completing his second pass through El Chocolate, the rear of Lappi’s car was wreathed in flames which neither his co-driver Janne Ferm or the attendant marshals could extinguish.

Lappi tried to drive the car away but was soon forced to bail out, leaving his Fiesta to burn to the ground. The following stage was cancelled due to the absence of fire services who were preoccupied with the Fiesta’s destruction.

The day ended with crowd-pleasing spectator stages that did little to change the order: Ogier leads Suninen and has more than half a minute in hand over Evans, Tanak and Rovanpera, with nine of the 12 remaining stages scheduled to follow on Saturday.

Gus Greensmith (M-Sport) is last of the WRC runners in sixth, ahead of WRC2 leader Pontus Tidemand in his Skoda Fabia R5.

Standings after SS12:

1	17	Sebastien Ogier	Toyota	1:23:09.2
2	3	Teemu Suninen	Ford	+13.2
3	33	Elfyn Evans	Toyota	+33.2
4	8	Ott Tanak	Hyundai	+33.4
5	69	Kalle Rovanpera	Toyota	+35.7
6	44	Gus Greensmith	Ford	+1:16.8
7	22	Pontus Tidemand	Skoda	+4:16.7
8	20	Nikolai Gryazin	Hyundai	+5:07.8
9	27	Marco Bulacia	Citroen	+5:54.3
10	32	Emilio-Andres Fernandez	Skoda	+8:39.8

The day began with Hyundai's Thierry Neuville holding a 1.1s lead over Toyota's British ace Elfyn Evans.

As joint championship leaders, however, this gave them the unfavourable position of running first and second on the road and sweeping the roughest gravel aside for those behind them.

The first man to capitalise upon his better road position was defending world champion Ott Tanak, who charged from third to first on the famous 31km El Chocolate stage that started this morning's action.

However, Hyundai's Estonian driver then dropped nearly a minute on the next stage after running wide and damaging the rear of his car, allowing Ogier through to lead.

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On the third stage of the morning it was the third Hyundai of Dani Sordo who set fastest time, less than a second in front of Tanak.

Unfortunately for the Spaniard, who started as a favourite for the event, he is having to try and claw back more than five minutes lost after his radiator came loose on El Chocolate.

Ogier retained the overall lead and was able to add a little more to the cushion back to his nearest pursuer, M-Sport's Teemu Suninen.

Neuville and Evans asserted themselves to claim first and second-fastest times coming back out of the mountains to close the loop in the Parque Bicentenario, with Ogier in third.

Heading out for the second loop, the consistency of Ogier, Sunninen and M-Sport's other Finnish driver Esapekka Lappi, currently fourth, has served them well.

Some impressive damage limitation by Neuville in third and Evans in fifth keeps them within striking distance over the rest of the event, while Tanak and Sordo, in seventh and 15th respectively, have an extra mountain to climb over the next two days.

On his first pass through the stage, Neuville’s time of 59.1 seconds put him 0.4 seconds in front of the man with whom he shares the points lead, Toyota’s Elfyn Evans.

On his second run, the imperious Neuville cut his time to 57.5 seconds, and although Evans also improved he could not get closer than 0.7s from the Belgian’s benchmark.

“With the road position on Friday, it’s the only stages where we have more or less equal conditions and we can try to catch back at least a second or two,” Neuville said. “If there could be even more it would be even better for us!”

Behind the lead battle, the rest of the WRC field traded tenths of a second over their two runs, with defending champion Ott Tanak emerging third on the overall leaderboard, 1.9 seconds shy of his Hyundai teammate Neuville.

Six-time champion Sebastien Ogier had been preoccupied all day with concerns for public health amid the coronavirus pandemic and, after a relatively muted performance, went to the overnight halt in sixth place, 2.5 seconds behind Neuville.

Speaking after setting the third-fastest time in the shakedown, the Toyota driver said: "Some issue I had today was more in the mind. It was difficult for me to be in the race to be honest this morning I was just - I almost didn't sleep last night.

"I was just, I don't know, concerned with this whole world situation at the moment and I really hope that what we do this weekend is right. I really hope that we don't bring any more danger here in a place where the cases are supposed toe lower.

"That's the only concern I had this morning but if the race has to go on definitely tomorrow I have to switch that off my mind and focus on the race because like this morning I was a bit of passenger in the car and that's not the way you need to drive a race."

Seventh place belonged to British youngster Gus Greensmith (M-Sport), who survived clattering into the kerb on his first run to keep his nose ahead of Toyota’s teenage sensation Kalle Rovanpera and Esapekka Lappi (M-Sport).

Friday’s route sees the field head into the mountains for six rough-hewn gravel stages, including two passes through the fabled 31.57-kilometre marathon of El Chocolate.

Both Evans and Neuville, running first and second on the road, will act as ‘sweepers’ for the rest of the field and share some trepidation about remaining at the top of the order.