Safari Rally - 2nd Day - 1st Loop: Evans tops a dramatic morning



At the end of the first loop of the second day, Elfyn Evans is leading Safari Rally Kenya with Sebastien Ogier and Kalle Rovanpera following him.


Elfyn Evans stole the lead of the race from Sebastien Ogier at the end of Stage 4 as the first one did not face any problem in this loop in comparison with his rivals.


Sebastien Ogier dropped second overall as he had no power towards the end of Stage 4 which costed him the first place of the race.


Kalle Rovanpera completes the top three and set the fastest times in Stage 3 and 4. However, it must be mentioned that he lost some seconds in Stage 4 as he was lost in his own dust.


Takamoto Katsuta climbed to fourth position overall as he stayed out of trouble throughout the morning loop. He was in eighth position at the end of Stage 2.


Craig Breen is fifth overall and was another WRC driver who did not face any problem in this loop.


Ott Tanak follows M-Sport driver for seven seconds and faced many problems in all these stages. First of all, he had a gearbox problem and felt like he had an automatic gearbox in Stage 2 while the gear lever of his i20N had fractured to the bottom end, but he was managing to change gear by pulling the horizontal rod. However, before the start of Stage 3, he found a way to fix the broken gear lever as he used the spare wheel brace as a gearstick. Finally, he lost in his own dust in Stage 4 while exiting a tight corner.




Adrien Fourmaux, Thierry Neuville, Oliver Solberg and Kajetan Kajetanowicz complete the top ten.


Neuville reported at the end of Stage 2 that he had no traction and a lot of wheelspin while he faced a problem with the gear shift there. His problems did not stop there as he had no power in Stage 4 resulting in dropping 54,6 seconds.


Solberg faced a similar issue with Neuville in Stage 4 as the first one was driving very slowly towards the end of SS4 and lost over a minute there. In addition to that, he said at the end of Stage 2 that something was wrong with his i20N.


Gus Greensmith dropped outside the top ten at the end of Stage 4 as the rear right tyre delaminated and it had caused a lot of body damage which means that he had to stop to change the wheel after the damper having caught fire. He dropped over 13 minutes in that stage. Last but not least, it must be mentioned that he was fourth overall at the end of Stage 3. 


Sebastien Loeb dropped to fifth from third at the end of Stage 4 as he lost in his own dust in a hairpin of the last stage of the morning loop. Despite the fact that he touched a tree and there was a light damage to the rear left of his Puma in Stage 2, he managed to be the quickest driver there. Finally, it was reported that the engine bay of his Puma caught fire after his leaving the stop control of SS4, but eventually he retired on the road section due to engine problems.


Watch below the stage times:






Watch below the overall classification after SS4:




Photo Credits: Toyota

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