This year is the first time this section of gravel track has been used for around 30 years at the Rally of Portugal. Elfyn Evans carded a time of 4min 37.1sec on his morning’s pass and the road-opening Welshman shaved 2.9 seconds off that time on his afternoon run and beat Takamota Katsuta by a tenth of a second.
Sami Pajari lost a few seconds with a half-spin and still matched Evans’s time. He also retained third after dropping just half a second to Oliver Solberg. Adrien Fourmaux had no spare tyres available after the previous stage but he was able to beat Solberg by 0.6 seconds to close the gap on sixth-placed Evans.
Seven-time event winner Sébastien Ogier attacked again, beat Fourmaux by 2.8 seconds and extended his outright lead over Thierry Neuville to five seconds. Märtinš Sesks continued his impressive afternoon turn of speed and recorded the third quickest time.
Notional times were given to a large number of non-Rally1 crews after a red flag had been shown on stage seven after Yohan Rossel had passed. Once they had been implemented, Nikolay Gryazin continued to lead the way after setting the fastest time in stage eight. Jan Solans was the quickest of the drivers registered for WRC2 and WRC2 Challenger points.
Roope Korhonen was the quickest of the early runners in Lousã 2.
Car 18. KATSUTA/JOHNSTON
“I just try to manage the next one. Tomorrow will be different.”
Car 33. EVANS/MARTIN
“Not very high grip in here. Quite slippery with sand at the start and then quite rough with some stones.”
Car 99. SOLBERG/EDMONDSON
“I just tried to take care of the tyres. Very lucky. I need to get a better feeling but we need to be sensible and then we go again.”
Car 5. PAJARI/SALMINEN
Lost a few seconds with a half-spin. “There was some super slippery entry into the corner and I thought I would nail it and it would go to the corner, like the movies, and it was half a mntre too early and we lost a couple of seconds.”
Car 16. FOURMAUX/CORIA
“I lost the brakes and could not slow down as I wanted. We checked everything and the car is okay. One more to go.”
Car 1. OGIER/LANDAIS
“So far it’s going better now. There is going to be another rally (weather) starting tomorrow.”
Car 11. NEUVILLE/WYDAEGHE
“We are doing a lot of diversity and recycling a lot of tyres at the moment.”
Car 95. ARMSTRONG/BYRNE
“Just getting through. There was quite a lot of hard surfaces in this one and a lot of vibration coming through. It was a short stage though.”
Car 55. MCERLEAN/TREACY
“It’s good to get back out on the stages. Trying to manage the tyres at the moment. One year it was wet but most of the years I came before it was quite dry.”
Car 22. SESKS/FRANCIS
“Something came back. I told you we were going to be fine. I think it’s starting to come back together. We did a good job in remote service talking to the engineers and the new approach is working.”
Car 6. SORDO/CARRERA
“The feeling is good. It’s nice to see a lot of spectators and the stages are demanding in different directions.”
Car 20. KORHONEN/VIINIKKA
“There were some quite big rocks on the road.”
Car 21. ROSSEL/DUNAND
“A clean loop for the moment. We fight for traction to be honest. We need to work for that.”
Car 24. DAPRÀ/GUGLIELMETTI
“We are struggling a bit with the speed and our pace on this rally. This evening we will try to do something different.”