Rally Chile - 1st Day - 1st Loop: Evans storms into the lead after Tanak's spin, Lappi/Loubet out



At the end of Friday morning, Elfyn Evans is the leader of Rally Chile with Teemu Suninen and Ott Tanak following him.

Elfyn Evans gained two places in SS2 and is leading Rally Chile since the end of that stage as he was the fastest driver on the final two stages of the morning.

Teemu Suninen is in second position overall on his third outing with the i20N and remained at that place all the morning despite the fact that he missed one braking and hit a bank in SS2. He was 0,1 seconds behind Evans after Stage 2, but the last one increased his lead to 2,6 seconds. 

Ott Tanak dropped from first to third at the end of Stage 2 when he had a spin on the last section of SS2 while his Puma had no hybrid power after a jump at the beginning of SS2. He was the fastest driver in Stage 1 while he will chase Suninen for the second place as their gap is now at 0,1 seconds.

Kalle Rovanpera climbed from fifth to fourth overall after Pierre-Louis Loubet's retirement in Stage 3 and was losing time on the stages due to the fact that he started first on the road. In addition to that, he reported understeer in Stage 3.

Thierry Neuville completes the top five and his morning was not easy as he had no grip and his i20N was sliding in Stage 1. Moreover, he had a front-left damage when he arrived at the stop control of SS2, but he said that he was happier with the chassis and would have worked on the suspension before the start of SS3.

Takamoto Katsuta, Gregoire Munster, Sami Pajari, Oliver Soberg and Alberto Heller compete the top ten.

Munster's co-driver, Louis Louka, forgot his pacenote book at the service park and had to read the pacenotes from his self-phone.

Esapekka Lappi was the first victim of Rally Chile as he cut the inside of the last left-hand corner in SS1 and rolled his car 19.6 Km into the stage.




Pierre-Louis Loubet was sitting in fourth place overall and was the quickest driver after the first split of Stage 3, but eventually he had to retire as he rolled his Puma.


Watch below the stage times:






Watch the overall classification after SS3:




Photo Credits: Toyota

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