Toyota’s Rovanpera wins comfortable victory
The Toyota driver snatched his third WRC victory of his career with a margin of 22 over Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville, while Esapekka Lappi when he returned to the Toyota factory team took the final podium in third place.
Rovanpera opened the road and took the lead of the rally after stage 3 but was sometimes involved in a six-way battle for the lead on Friday, as only 8.9 s separated the cars after stage 5.
The Finn managed to overthrow Neuville’s lead of 4.3 s overnight on Saturday’s first stage to mark the fifth lead change with Lappi, Evans and Ott Tanak all enjoying a short period ahead.
Once there, Rovanpera was pushed hard by Evans through Saturday when the battle for victory developed into a two-horse race. The latter, however, made a mistake in the last corner of Saturday night’s spectator stage which resulted in a wild finish over a snow bank.
The unorthodox finish resulted in a 10-yard penalty that effectively put the Welshman out of the fight before he then crashed on Sunday morning’s first stage and then withdrew with a problem with his hybrid system.
From there, Rovanpera, who won six stages, was able to cross to victory to take the lead in the championship in the event that his father Harri Rovanpera recorded his only WRC win in 2001.
Neuville finished the rally with an ascent to take third on the power step to get three extra points along with those to finish second overall.
Lappi took third place, 30.6 seconds later, when he returned to the WRC after showing a strong pace all the time, including a stage win on Friday.
Toyota’s Takamoto Katsuta took home his Toyota GR Yaris as fourth after being delayed by 39s earlier in the rally after a run-in with a snow bank.
Kalle Rovanperä, Jonne Halttunen, Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT Toyota GR Yaris Rally1
Photo by: Toyota Racing
After the Monte Carlo hero fashion, M-Sport endured a difficult rally with Gus Greensmith as the only car that passed the entire rally distance as fifth. The Briton was 3min20.4s in operation, after losing time to a gearbox and hybrid problems on Friday.
Craig Breen was forced out of the rally twice, the first with a crash on stage 3 before a technical problem put him out on Saturday. He returned on Sunday to snatch a point on the power step. Teammate Adrien Fourmaux left the rally from six after an electrical problem on Saturday night.
Hyundai’s Oliver Solberg completed Rally1 as sixth. The Swede had run as high as second on Friday but lost confidence in his i20 N until Saturday, before he received a penalty of 2min40s for checking in late after a gas problem on the way to Saturday night’s last stage.
Teammate Tanak seemed to be a factor in the victory battle until he was forced out of the competition due to a hybrid failure on Friday when he was in second place after stage 5.
However, the 2019 world champion returned to the action to win the five bonus points to win the power step, which ended the test 1.9 s faster than Rovanpera.
The championship will face a long break until a trip to Croatia for the third round April 21-24.