Elfyn Evans says that his wish was to close further his gap from Kalle Rovanpera at the end of Rally Chile, but he is happy for finishing in the podium last week and for his championship hopes are still alive.
The Welshman finished at the lowest place of the podium at Rally Chile last weekend and was in the fight with Teemu Suninen and Thierry Neuville for the second and third position overall respectively, but eventually he could not catch the Belgian on the classification. Moreover, it must be mentioned that he might have delivered a better result than the third place if Toyota's tyre strategy was right on Saturday morning as all of its drivers faced rear punctures in Stage 9 due to the fact that they picked up two soft tyres on the rear. He scored 19 points in total from which he took the four points from PS as he was the second-fastest driver in Powerstage. At the end of Rally Chile, Evans decreased his gap from the championship leader Kalle Rovanpera to 31 points with two rounds remaining until the season finale.
"Overall the weekend was perhaps not what we hoped for and I think there was potential for more", Evans said.
"We didn’t quite get it all right this time around even though we had some good speed at times.
"But I think we can be relatively happy with our end result of a podium.
"The best news is that the team has clinched the manufacturers’ title.
"It’s an honour to be a part of the team and it’s great to reward everybody for all their hard work.
"In the drivers’ championship we probably needed to close a bit more on Kalle this weekend than we did, but at least the fight is still alive".
Photo Credits: Toyota
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