Stage report
WRC Rally Croatia
WRC Croatia: Rovanpera stars as rain wreaks havoc on Friday morning
World Rally Championship leader Kalle Rovanpera starred in tricky wet conditions to lead Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville after an eventful morning at Rally Croatia.
Tom Howard
Edited: Apr 22, 2022, 2:31 PM
Copy link
Share on Viber
Rovanpera emerged as the class of the field winning three of the four morning stages held on slippery wet asphalt as he made the most of the clean conditions being first on the road.
The Toyota driver ended the loop with a 12.5s lead over Neuville, who produced a solid display for Hyundai, with teammate Ott Tanak,47.3s adrift in third.
Craig Breen will head in to the afternoon stages in fourth, only 1.9s shy of the final podium position. M-Sport teammate Gus Greensmith completed the distance in fifth. But it proved to be a challenging day for the Ford squad, which lost Adrien Fourmaux to a spin off the road on stage 3, while Pierre-Louis Loubet retired after suffering three punctures in two stages.
Elfyn Evans also suffered two front-left punctures across the morning stages which left him 2m01s adrift in eighth, behind Oliver Solberg and Takamoto Katsuta after Toyota’s Esapekka Lappi retired on the opening stage.
The rally began in an eventful fashion as crews grappled with the slippery conditions and a road that became increasingly dirtier as drivers dragged mud onto the surface from cutting corners.
Rovanpera set a blistering time on the first test, winning the stage by 4.1s from Neuville, who was lucky to escape from an excursion into a ditch on the exit of the third corner.
The Belgian labelled the stage “horrible” and the challenging road was winning few fans among the drivers.
Breen emerged third-fastest ahead of Tanak while Greensmith was fortunate to wrestle his car back on the road after a wild moment that resulted in his Ford Puma climbing a grass bank, narrowly avoiding a tree.
Solberg also lost time to a spin but worse was to come for Toyota’s Lappi and Evans, and M-Sport’s Loubet.
Lappi clipped a rock while cutting a right-hander which damaged his front-right suspension, ending his day early on his Croatia debut, while Evans picked up a front-left puncture and lost 1m20s.
Meanwhile, Loubet could count himself unlucky as the Frenchman picked up punctures to both his front tyres, but was able to replenish his rubber having carried two spares.
Rovanpera continued his impressive start by winning the second stage and again Neuville emerged as his nearest rival, albeit 7.5s adrift.
Breen lost his grip of third overall to Tanak after the Irishman dropped 12s when he suffered a moment on the wet roads. The M-Sport driver ran wide on a left-hander and elected to take evasive action by running up a grass bank avoiding a water hydrant in the process.
Behind, teammate Loubet suffered even more misfortune, as he incurred a third puncture of the day, which ruled him out of the remaining stages on Friday.
The rain returned at the start of the third stage but it failed to dampen Rovanpera’s charge although he was unable to complete three consecutive stage wins.
Teammate Evans issued a response after his slow start to the rally to take the honours in stage 3, posting a time 2.6s faster than Rovanpera, while Tanak was third and Breen fourth.
Up until this point Fourmaux was the only M-Sport driver to avoid trouble. However, that ended 200m into the stage when he lost the rear of this Puma and speared through a hedge, before coming to rest in a garden. The Frenchman didn’t start the final stage of morning.
Rovanpera wrapped up a strong opening morning by winning the final stage before service held in heavy rain. Neuville kept the pressure on the Finn, to sit 0.7s back while Breen made up 6.1s on Tanak in the battle for third.
After suffering his second puncture of the morning, Evans managed to limit the damage by dropping only 16.8s.
Yoann Rossel leads WRC2 from Britain's Chris Ingram, while Jon Armstrong tops the Junior WRC category, sitting an impressive 18th overall.
The crews will repeat the morning loop of stages this afternoon.
We want your opinion!
What would you like to see on Motorsport.com?
Take our 5 minute survey.
- The Motorsport.com Team
Read and post comments
Read also :
Share Or Save This Story
Copy link
Share on Viber
Previous article WRC Croatia: Lappi retires as Evans suffers puncture in first stage
Next article Understanding WRC hybrid failures top of FIA priority list
Top Comments
There are no comments at the moment. Would you like to write one?
View More & Comment
More from
Tom Howard
Argentina set to make WRC comeback in 2028
WRC
WRC 1 d
Argentina set to make WRC comeback in 2028
Sebastien Loeb tests again as Project Rally One submits WRC homologation papers
WRC
WRC 3 d
Sebastien Loeb tests again as Project Rally One submits WRC homologation papers
More from
Kalle Rovanperä
Why Kalle Rovanpera and Ott Tanak are returning to the WRC
WRC
WRC 10 d
Why Kalle Rovanpera and Ott Tanak are returning to the WRC
Kalle Rovanpera "open" on 2027 motorsport future ahead of talks with Toyota
WRC
WRC
Rally Finland
3 mo
Kalle Rovanpera "open" on 2027 motorsport future ahead of talks with Toyota
Kalle Rovanpera to conduct demo run at WRC Rally Finland
WRC
WRC
Rally Finland
3 mo
Kalle Rovanpera to conduct demo run at WRC Rally Finland
Latest news
Carson Hocevar and Cleetus McFarland win LeMullets 2026 in epic finish
General
Misc General 1 h
Carson Hocevar and Cleetus McFarland win LeMullets 2026 in epic finish
TV ratings released for NASCAR Cup season finale
NASCAR Cup
NAS NASCAR Cup
Homestead-Miami
8 h
TV ratings released for NASCAR Cup season finale
Chase Elliott's car chief leaves Hendrick for NASCAR Truck crew chief role
NASCAR Truck
NSTR NASCAR Truck
Homestead
9 h
Chase Elliott's car chief leaves Hendrick for NASCAR Truck crew chief role
Feature
Discover prime content
Subscribe and access Motorsport.com with your ad-blocker.
From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. Still, we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker.
You have 2 options:
- Become a subscriber.
- Disable your adblocker.
Subscribe now Already subscribed? Sign in here
Already disabled your adblocker?
Reload page
Manage Alerts
Subscribe