Evans needs to find new ideas to surpass his difficulties in Portugal

Elfyn Evans keeps only the six points as the positive from his weekend in Portugal and believes that it is very important for him to come up with new ideas to find the right set-up for Rally Italia Sardegna.

The Welshman scored only six points at Rally de Portugal which came from his sixth place on the Saturday classification, but generally he was struggling to find pace and confidence with his Yaris in order to deliver a better result for the WRC title bid. On the other hand, his championship rival, Thierry Neuville, managed to finish in third place despite the fact that he was opening the road on Friday whereas Ott Tanak closed even more his gap from Evans as their margin is now at seven points after the end of Rally de Portugal. It must be mentioned that the major point loss for Evans was on Sunday due to the fact that he had an impact with a rock resulting in switching on EV mode and in damaging the radiator in Stage 21. Scott Martin had to push their Yaris at the stop control of SS21 and managed to return to the regroup zone where they worked on their car before the start of Powerstage, but they were not able to score some points on the second pass from Fafe. After the end of Rally de Portugal, Evans remains second on the championship, but his gap is now increased from six to 24 points from Neuville, but the most important thing is that the teams will not test for Rally Sardinia due to the limited testing days as every driver has completed their test for the fifth and the sixth WRC round.

"The six points is the only positive", Evans said. 

"Of course, you want to forget the weekend, but we have to learn from it and be ready for the next one.

"It will be difficult now with the current testing situation, but we definitely need to come up with some new ideas for Sardinia".

Finally, he answered when he was asked if there was time to find a solution: "Possibly, but it is obviously a risk to take something without trying it but maybe we need to look back to the past, we will see, we will discuss with the team".

Source: Motorsport.com

Photo Credits: Toyota