At the end of the afternoon of the first day, Thierry Neuville is now leading Ypres Rally with Ott Tanak and Elfyn Evans following him.
Thierry Neuville is the new leader of his home and stole the lead from Evans at the end of Stage 7. In fact, he was the fastest driver in all stages on this afternoon loop, but he moved ahead of his two rivals in one single stage (SS7).
Ott Tanak remains second overall and comes right behind his teammate for 2,5 seconds. It must be mentioned that Tanak and Neuville set an identical time on the first stage of the loop.
Elfyn Evans dropped to third place at the end of Stage 7 while he suffered from a puncture in Stage 6. However, he took a 10-second time penalty for checking late at the start control of SS8.
The gap between these three top drivers was less than one second at the end of the penultimate stage of the day.
Esapekka Lappi remains fourth overall and extended his advantage over Craig Breen as the first one was the fastest driver than the M-Sport driver in all stages. Their gap is now at 18,8 seconds.
Gus Greensmith is still in sixth place overall and is the second-best driver for M-Sport Ford.
Oliver Solberg follows Greensmith for 26,7 seconds and reported at the end of SS6 that he had a gearbox issue with his i20N as he could not change the gears correctly.
Adrien Fourmaux is eighth overall and did not improve his pace since the last stage of the morning loop.
Takamoto Katsuta remains outside the top ten and Toyota mechanics repaired the gearbox issue he faced with his Yaris in the morning.
Watch below the stage times:
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