At the end of Friday afternoon, Sebastien Ogier extends his lead over his teammates as Kalle Rovanpera and Elfyn Evans following him.
Sebastien Ogier increased his gap from his rivals at the end of Friday as he was the fastest driver in all afternoon stages. He followed a different tyre strategy, as he chose to carry only one spare wheel, while he had a rear right bumper damage after SS7.
Kalle Rovanpera remains in second place overall and mentioned understeer after the opening stage of the afternoon loop as he said that he changed the set-up of his Yaris. His gap from Ogier was at 2,5 seconds at the end of Friday morning, but now is at 22,8 seconds.
Elfyn Evans completes the top three and did a mistake in Stage 7 as he collected a bush with the front of his car.
Esapekka Lappi gained two places after SS6 and is now fourth overall. The Finn was the closest rival of Ogier in Stages 5 and 6 and is in the fight for the podium as he is 10,5 seconds behind Evans.
Takamoto Katsuta is still fifth overall despite Neuville retirement in Stage 6 and his margin from the fourth Lappi was at 0,9 seconds after the second stage of the afternoon. Moreover, he picked up a front-right puncture in the last ten kilometers of Stage 7 while his windscreen was cracked by a tree branch in a high-speed section of SS7.
Dani Sordo follows the Japanese driver for nine seconds and dropped time on the final stage of the day due to the fact that he had dust in front of him after a hairpin and stopped for ten seconds. Before this incident, he was the fastest driver on the first split of SS7.
Ott Tanak overtook Pierre-Louis Loubet on the classification as the last one stopped in Stages 5 and 7 to change a wheel rsulting in dropping more than six minutes.
Thierry Neuville was in fourth place overall after the end of Stage 5, but he was forced to retire in SS6 with a broken front-left suspension. The incident happened after a compression where the front-left puncture of his i20N collapsed, therefore he had to stop 7.9 Km into an access road of SS6.
Watch below the stage times:
Watch below the overall classification after SS7:
Photo Credits: Toyota
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