Evans: "We were maybe a bit too conservative in Paraguay"

Elfyn Evans believes that he followed a more conservative approach at Rally Paraguay after his punctures admitting that it was difficult for him to find the right balance between risk and reward.

Evans was starting first on the road on Friday as he was leading the championship standings after the end of Rally Finland. After the first two stages of Rally Paraguay, Evans was outside the top five, but he gained three places and moved up to third overall at the end of Stage 3 despite a puncture which was occured at 20Km into SS3. After the end of Stage 5, he was second overall while he was leading Rally Paraguay after Stage 6 and was in front of Hayden Paddon on the classification. However, the Welshman dropped to third overall again after Stage 7 when he got a rear right puncture which had an impact to the bodywork. It must be mentioned that Evans was ahead of the fourth Adrien Fourmaux for more than one minute, but the last one gave a hard fight in order to his finish at the top three. Evans's gap was reduced to 3,3 seconds at the end of Saturday as Fourmaux was very dominant on the most of the stages whereas Evans could not find a response to Fourmaux's charge. Eventually, Fourmaux managed to pass Evans on the classification for 1,6 seconds after Stage 18 which means that the last one dropped to fourth and started losing ground compared to his rival as Fourmaux finished for just 5,1 seconds ahead of Evans and stole some valuable points from him for his championship fight with Sami Pajari.

"This weekend started pretty well on Friday until we had the issue with the tyre in the afternoon, and after that we didn’t really settle into a good enough rhythm and were missing some pace to hold off Adrien who was really strong", Evans said. 

"We were maybe a bit too conservative after all the drama of Friday when conditions were perhaps more extreme, but it’s not easy to find the right balance between risk and reward. 

"I can’t be completely happy with the weekend but others fared worse and we still come away with some decent points".

Photo Credits: Toyota