Thierry Neuville extended his Central European Rally lead over Toyota’s Sebastien Ogier to edge another step closer to sealing a maiden World Rally Championship title.
Neuville produced an impressive drive through six tricky asphalt stages held in the Czech Republic to increase his advantage over the eight-time world champion to 6.4s.
The Hyundai driver took the rally lead in stage five, the third test of the day, and was able to make the most of starting first on the road to lead an event that could decide the world championship, with Neuville needing only to outscore Ogier by 10 points and Hyundai's Ott Tanak by two points to clinch a maiden world title this weekend.
Tanak struggled to find the ideal set-up, ending Friday in third [+7.8s] ahead of Toyota’s Elfyn Evans [+15.1s] and the returning Takamoto Katsuta [+38.6s].
Rally1 rookie Sami Pajari [+1m28.2s] and M-Sport-Ford duo Adrien Fourmaux [+1m33.4s] and Gregoire Munster [2m27.4s] rounded out the top eight. Hyundai’s Andreas Mikkelsen crashed out of the rally after clattering into a fence in stage five, having held sixth position.
A third pass through the Klatovy, 11.78km test kicked off the afternoon before crews headed to a remote service.
The stage win went to Katsuta who managed to navigate what had become a very dirty road, 0.4s faster than rally leader Neuville.
“I enjoyed it a lot, tough conditions but I was confident to push,” said Katsuta.
Ogier was a second adrift of Katsuta as the Frenchman’s deficit to Neuville grew to 3.3s.
Tanak also dropped time with Estonian reporting that he was still “dreaming” of a good set-up on his i20 N.
However, he was faring much better than Fourmaux as he tried to tame his Ford Puma with the added disadvantage of a malfunctioning hybrid unit.
“It is very frustrating honestly, I try my best but the car is so hard to drive, under braking the car is moving a lot. We are trying many things in the road section and it's not working,” said Forumaux.
It didn’t get much better for the Frenchman after the remote service as the shock suffered by his hybrid unit from a jump landing was too severe and was unable to be reset for the final two stages. Set-up tweaks made in service did at least improve the handling to some extent.
Neuville claimed his first fastest time of the day after winning stage seven (Strasin, 26.69km).
The second pass through the longest stage of the rally was much drier than anticipated as the Belgian clocked a time 0.6s faster than Evans, who wished he’d opted for hard compound tyres.
Tanak appeared to have made some progress with the set-up of his i20 N to post the third fastest time, while Ogier was surprised to drop 3.6s.
“We are just not fast enough, it was a clean stage but we are missing a bit of pace. The car feels nice to drive but we have to check,” said Ogier, who was 1.2s faster than Katsuta.
The fourth Toyota driven by Pajari had a brief run-in with a hedge but successfully reached the stage end faster than the struggling Fords of Fourmaux and Munster.
Light drizzle affected the final stage of the day (Sumavske Hostice 2 16.85km) to further elevate the difficulty of the technical test.
Ogier was however able to respond to the time loss from the previous stage by setting the pace. The Toyota driver was 0.5s faster than Neuville to cut the lead to 6.4s.
“l’m happy to be at the end. It is easy to make a mistake and I knew the only thing that was important to us was to make it to the end,” said Neuville.
Evans lost ground on the top three after what he described as “a bit of funny feeling” towards the end of the stage that pushed him 7.3s shy of third-placed Tanak.
In WRC2, Nikolay Gryazin completed the six stages with a 3.1s lead over Oliver Solberg, who is not scoring points this weekend.
Yohan Rossel’s title hopes took another hit after a wild moment in the final stage. The Frenchman needs to win the class to keep his championship alive, ended the day 1m36.7s behind Gryazin.
