WRC
Tänak edges Fourmaux in tight Friday morning fight
Ott Tänak holds a slender lead over Hyundai team-mate Adrien Fourmaux after a closely-fought opening loop at Vodafone Rally de Portugal on Friday morning.
Just 0.2sec split the i20 N Rally1 duo after four classic gravel speed tests south of Porto, with each driver bagging a pair of stage wins as the fifth round of the FIA World Rally Championship roared into life.
Tänak set the pace early, topping the timesheets on both Mortágua and Lousã to snatch the lead from Thursday night’s super special stage winner Elfyn Evans. But it was Fourmaux who gained the upper hand as the loop wore on, capitalising on a soft compound Hankook tyre choice for the later Goís and Arganil stages to close in on his Estonian counterpart.
Six-time Portugal winner Sébastien Ogier completed the provisional podium, 7.2sec adrift of Fourmaux. The Frenchman lost the bulk of that time in the opening two stages and admitted his Toyota GR Yaris Rally1’s set-up was “too soft” for the conditions.
Fourmaux pulled time on his team-mate in the morning's second half
© WRC
For Tänak, the morning marked a return to form after a frustrating previous outing at Rally Islas Canarias, where he failed to win a single stage. He is now closing in on his 400th WRC stage win but rued a costly tyre call for the final stage of the loop.
“We put the hard tyre on for this one, and it was clearly not a good choice,” he said. “[The road] was damp and we had to wrestle the car quite a lot.”
Takamoto Katsuta was just 0.7sec adrift of Ogier in fourth after a consistent run featuring two top-three stage times. The Japanese driver, who also pilots a GR Yaris Rally1, described the roads as “slippy” but maintained a 5.0sec buffer over team-mate Kalle Rovanperä.
Ogier found his car to be "too soft" early in the day
© WRC
Road-opening duties took their toll on championship leader Evans, who ended the loop in sixth, 8.6sec behind Rovanperä. The Welshman swept a clean line for those behind and paid the price on the sandy surface.
Defending champion Thierry Neuville followed in seventh, another 4.1sec in arrears. The Belgian clipped a bank with the rear of his Hyundai on SS2 but escaped with no major damage.
Rising Finnish star Sami Pajari ran a solid eighth in his Toyota, while M-Sport Ford Puma pair Josh McErlean and Grégoire Munster rounded out the top 10. Their team-mate Mārtiņš Sesks lost several minutes early on after stopping to change a front-left wheel on SS1.
