Evans poised for CER push despite title longshot

The Toyota driver still has an outside chance of lifting this year’s drivers’ title but, trailing leader Thierry Neuville by 46 points, his focus is very much on the roads around Czech Republic, Austria and Germany this week. He’s also quick to point out that the weather isn’t far from anybody’s mind right now.

“We know CER can be quite difficult in terms of the weather on a Tarmac rally,” he said. “It’s normally quite advantageous to be at the front of the running order. Fourth is not bad, but, of course, you really start to suffer with the mud if the weather is bad.”

The WRC is back on Tarmac for the first time since Croatia in April – an event which ended well for Toyota, with Sébastien Ogier winning and Evans finishing second.

“Time on Tarmac has been really quite limited throughout the year,” he said. “The driving conditions are not so different from Croatia in the end, so at least we have a good base to work from.

“The car was working well there. We’re still working through some improvements, which hopefully can put us in a good place for the event. Of course, the first couple of runs take a bit of getting used to again, especially in wet or muddy conditions like it was on the first run at our test. The grip is going from one extreme to the other quite quickly. We’ll have to do what we can and, like always, we want to aim as high as possible.”

After running in a podium position for much of the first half of last year’s CER, Evans slid off the road and into a barn on Saturday morning - an off that ended his championship hopes.