The first day of Rally Islas Canarias has come to an end. Kalle Rovanperä and Toyota had a stellar day to open the event.
Morning Loop (Stages 1-3)
Kalle Rovanperä swept the morning loop of stages. As the Finnish driver went three for three on-stage wins to take a 17.8-second lead over Sebastien Ogier to open the event. No drivers had any major issues per sey on the opening loop, however, every driver that wasn’t behind the wheel of a Toyota struggled. As no driver for Hyundai or M-Sport had a top-three stage time to start the weekend. That being said at the end of the morning loop Adrien Fourmaux sits fourth, 14 seconds behind Evans who sits in third.
Afternoon Loop (Stages 4-6)
Kalle Rovanperä continued what he started in the morning loop. As the 2-time champion once again swept the loop of stages to win all six stages on the day. Rovanperä ends the day with a 26.8-second lead over Ogier. The struggles for Hyundai and M-Sport continued, as now Toyota holds the top five positions in the overall standings. Thierry Neuville who sits sixth is only 7.3 seconds behind Takamoto Katsuta however. It is also worth noting that unless something absurd happens a Toyota driver will score maximum points for the Friday-Saturday portion of the event. As Neuville sits over a minute behind Rovanperä.
Quotes
Toyota Gazoo Racing
Juha Kankkunen (Deputy Team Principal)
“Everything went very well today. All our drivers were smiling and enjoying the driving on these very nice roads. I always had trust in Kalle: we know what he can do when everything is right, and here the car seems to be perfect for him. We know Seb and Elfyn are very good drivers, they were just not quite on Kalle’s level today. Sami has done a good day too, and for Taka we’ll try tonight to find a bit more from the car for him. The whole team has done an excellent job with the testing and preparation, and already in shakedown, the drivers were happy. It’s been a perfect day really. The rally is never finished until the last stage, but at the moment it looks very good.”
Elfyn Evans (Driver car 33)
“It’s definitely been a great day for the team today. They’ve done a really good job preparing for this rally. On a personal note, I’m maybe not entirely satisfied and could have done with finding a bit more confidence with the car and a few more seconds to fight with Kalle and Seb, who have been doing a great job. I’m not quite able to follow them at the moment but we’ll try a few changes tonight. Tomorrow’s stages are maybe a bit more abrasive, so it could be a bit more difficult for the tyres, and we have to see what the weather does too.”
Kalle Rovanperä (Driver car 69)
“I’m really happy with today. Everything came together well and it’s been a super day for the team overall. It seems we have done our preparation well and it meant we could just enjoy the driving and do a good job. The car is fast, I’m happy with the balance and I can drive it like I want, and our pacenotes have been good as well. Some sections of tomorrow’s stages will be a bit different in character to today, so we need to keep focused, see if we can make the car even better, and try to keep this up.”
Sébastien Ogier (Driver car 17)
“It’s been a very positive day for the whole team. To fill the top five places after day one is pretty impressive, so well done to our engineers and mechanics for the hard work, adapting to the new tyres as best as we can. Of course I’m never 100 per cent happy to be second but Kalle was really flying today and there was no way we could match his pace. I think we made some improvements this afternoon in terms of feeling and pace, and we still have some ideas for tomorrow.”
Takamoto Katsuta (Driver car 18)
“It’s been a very nice day for the team. It’s an amazing effort by everybody in preparing the car for our first time here with the WRC. Personally, I’m not completely happy with myself and seem to be missing something, so I just need to improve the speed a little bit. I’m not able to be quite as smooth as you need to be on this kind of rally. Already in the afternoon we changed a few things and it went in a better direction and hopefully we can find something more for tomorrow.”
Sami Pajari (Driver car 5)
“Today has been really good and the position we’re in as a team at the end of it is very nice. Personally, I was not completely happy in the morning but then stage-by-stage the feeling has been getting better. In the afternoon we found quite a nice flow and the times were even more competitive. Of course, when there’s still a bit of a gap to the front, then I’m always thinking about what we can improve so let’s see what we can do for tomorrow.”
Hyundai Shell Mobis
Thierry Neuville
“It is a struggle to find positives from today; it has been tough, and a hard one to swallow. It was difficult to keep our motivation high but we kept fighting. Martijn and I tried to work on the car between every stage, and we were able to gain two places. We are constantly improving bit by bit, and this afternoon with a bit of adapting to my driving style I was making it work, but we will need to fight for every position tomorrow and Sunday.”
Ott Tänak
“It is very difficult to enjoy the stages when you’re fighting so much out there, especially when you are down on speed and struggling to get the car working on these very specific roads. I think it’s a simple problem, but one that is difficult to fix. There’s not much we can do with the suspension or transmission, but we will try to find a way to be in a better position for Sunday. ”
Adrien Fourmaux
“This morning was not perfect, but it was much better than this afternoon. I made a change to the set-up of the car to try and find more grip, but it really changes the balance. I was struggling with understeer that I didn’t have on the first loop, and I started to overheat the tyres. It’s frustrating to see the gap to the cars ahead, so as a team we will try to move in the right direction for the next two days. ”
François-Xavier Demaison – Hyundai Technical Director
“It has been a challenging day here at Rally Islas Canarias. We are certainly not where we expected to be, so there is a lot of work for us to do over the next two days to bring us back to where we should be. We need to adapt the car to a better setup for the tyres, as well as the specificities of this rally. However, anything can still happen in WRC. We will push to improve the car and to find a solution that allows us to attack, particularly on Sunday where there is a lot of points on offer.”