At the end of Friday afternoon, Kalle Rovanpera grabs the lead in Portugal with Sebastien Ogier and Takamoto Katsuta following him.
Kalle Rovanpera stole the lead from Takamoto Katsuta at the end of Stage 6 despite the fact that he reported understeer. In fact, the Finn was leading over Katsuta for 0,1 and 0,2 second at the end of SS6 and SS7 respectively while he said at the end of SS7 that he suffered from some tyre issues.
Sebastien Ogier climbed to the second place at the end of SS9 and was the fastest driver in SS6 and SS9, but he is in the sight for the lead as his gap from the first Rovanpera is at one second. However, the eight-time WRC Champion lost his third place over Ott Tanak for 0,5 seconds after the end of Stage 8 as he had no hybrid power. Finally, he mentioned that he made a change to the set-up at the midday service in order to make his Yaris stiffier.
Takamoto Katsuta dropped from first to third overall and completes the 1-2-3 for Toyota. The only issue he faced during Friday afternoon was the lack of grip which was caused by his tyre wear in Stage 7.
Ott Tanak is in fourth place overall and spoiled the party for Toyota at the end of Stage 8 as he moved ahead of Ogier for five tenths of a second.
Dani Sordo completes the top five and was the fastest driver in Stage 7, but the most important thing is that he left Thierry Neuville behind for 0,2 seconds at the end of Friday which means that the Belgian will have a disadvantage over his teammate tomorrow.
Adrien Fourmaux sits in seventh place overall and could not understand the reason why he lost so much time compared to the front-runners.
Elfyn Evans remains eighth and lost 52,6 seconds in Stage 7 when the front right tyre came off the rim. The most serious problem for him came when Scott Martin forgot the pacenotes on the marshal's time table at the stop control of SS6 as he gave assistance to Martijn Wydaeghe resulting in reading the pacenotes from his mobile phone for the three final stages of the day.
Gregoire Munster is still in ninth position and had an impact in the beginning of Stage 6 resulting in having to switch on the engine mapping.
Watch below the stage times:
Watch below the overall classification after the end of SS9:
Photo Credits: Toyota
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