WRC leader Kalle Rovanperä leads the Safari Rally after a turbulent Friday: Puncture costs Ogier the lead – Loeb out with engine defect
Toyota driver Kalle Rovanperä leads the Safari Rally in Kenya, the sixth round of the 2022 World Rally Championship (WRC), after Friday. After a turbulent day with several lead changes and technical problems for numerous drivers, the WRC leader has a lead of 22.4 seconds over team-mate Elfyn Evans after seven of 19 special stages (SS).
Third is Ott Tänak in the best Hyundai. He is only 2.9 seconds behind Evans. Another 1.3 seconds behind is Takamoto Katsuta (Toyota), who is thus in the fight for the podium positions. Katsuta could even move up to second place, as he was held up by the slow Craig Breen (Ford) on the seventh special stage and is likely to receive a time credit.
Thierry Neuville (Hyundai) is almost a minute behind the leader in fifth place, Sebastien Ogier (Toyota) is sixth. The reigning world champion had led the rally until the last special stage of the day, but had to change a flat tyre and lost more than two minutes.
Engine on Sebastien Loeb’s car catches fire
Seventh is Oliver Solberg (Hyundai). Eighth place is currently held by Kajetan Kajetanowicz (Skoda), who is also leading the WRC2 class. Craig Breen (Ford) as the best of the M-Sport team, which was badly hit on Friday, and WRC2 driver Sean Johnston (Citroen) complete the top 10.
Friday was over early for Sebastien Loeb (Ford), who had won the first special stage of the day in the morning. An engine failure put an end to his drive after the last special stage of the morning loop.
“We were driving normally, came to the stop control and the engine stopped. We tried to restart it but it wouldn’t start again and there was smoke coming out of the bonnet. I opened it and there was a small fire,”
Many problems at M-Sport and Hyundai
Loeb initially continued with the plug-in hybrid drive’s electric motor, but stopped five kilometres from the service park with an empty battery. On Saturday, however, the WRC record champion will be able to return to the action.
Bizarre moment for Ott Tanak this morning as his gear lever snapped during Stage 2
Despite the issue, he only dropped 3.2s on Stage 3
@OfficialWRCpic.twitter.com/bMwooW1XRo
– Autosport (@autosport) June 24, 2022
Overall, things did not go smoothly for M-Sport on Friday. Loeb’s teammate Adrien Fourmaux lost a lot of time due to a problem with the drivetrain, Gus Greensmith’s car caught fire after a puncture and had to be extinguished by the Briton, putting him more than 13 minutes behind. Breen was only able to finish the last special stage of the day at slow speed after a spin-off.
Hyundai also had problems with all drivers. Neuville and Solberg complained about intermittent loss of power. Tänak suffered a strange defect on the first special stage of the day: his gear lever broke!
As a result, the Estonian had to laboriously change gears at the gearshift gate further down and lost more than half a minute. But Tänak knew how to help himself and repaired the defect with the help of a wheel spanner, which he converted into a gearshift knob.
On Saturday, six special stages over a distance of 150.88 kilometres are on the programme of the Safari Rally.
