WRC
Evans edges Katsuta as loose snow shakes up Sweden shakedown
Elfyn Evans struck first at Rally Sweden on Thursday, setting the benchmark in a loose Umeå City shakedown as the FIA World Rally Championship’s only pure winter round roared into life.
The Toyota Gazoo Racing driver stopped the clocks at 1min 52.7sec on his third and final pass of the 3.44km test, edging team-mate Takamoto Katsuta by 0.6sec. With lines already carved into the road surface before Rally1 crews even began their runs, conditions proved more demanding than many expected.
Unusually, Rally3 crews had tackled the stage earlier in the morning, leaving the snow heavily cut up by the time the headline cars launched. The result was a messy surface with loose snow under braking and rapidly forming ruts through the corners.
“It is more messy and loose than what we expected,” Evans admitted. “The weekend ahead should be nice. Let’s see how the conditions are, it will depend a lot on what we can do.”
Championship leader Oliver Solberg slotted into third, 1.1sec adrift, but not without drama on his opening run. The Swede brushed a snowbank in a moment that briefly threatened to spoil his homecoming.
Solberg survived this brush with a snowbank
© WRC
“Oh my god, it was slippery, really slippery,” he said. “There was snow everywhere. I missed one corner. It is amazing to start your home rally… but it is not going to be easy.”
Toyota’s early strength was underlined by Sami Pajari, who completed a top-four lockout at 1.3sec off the pace.
Behind them, the picture was more mixed. Esapekka Lappi, back in a third Hyundai i20 N Rally1 for Hyundai Motorsport, overshot a junction on his first pass and was forced to reverse. He recovered to fifth fastest, just ahead of M-Sport’s Jon Armstrong, with a 1min 54.3sec.
“I hope it will not go like that all the time,” Lappi smiled. “There was no grip under braking at all in the loose snow.”
Mārtiņš Sesks stalled his Puma Rally1 on the start line of his first run but responded by taking seventh behind team-mate Armstrong. Behind him, Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville ended the session eighth overall, describing it as “not a perfect shakedown”, while team-mate Adrien Fourmaux was ninth and focused on settling in on the studs. Josh McErlean rounded out the top 10.
The rally begins in earnest this evening with SS1, Umeå, at 19:05 local time.
