Toyota’s Oliver Solberg moved into an early lead at Rally Portugal at the end of the opening leg of the first pure gravel event of the World Rally Championship season.
Solberg navigated through two traditional rough gravel stages and an asphalt super special with a 3.4s margin over Hyundai’s Adrien Fourmaux. Toyota’s Sébastien Ogier recovered from a slow start to sit third, 7.2s from the lead.
"I just tried to be clean and take it easy. We have no service [until the end of Friday] so you don't want to touch anything. It has been an ok start. It's a long way to go and every day is going to be different,” said Solberg.
Hyundai had targeted this weekend’s rally as an opportunity to begin to turn around its fortunes given its i20 N is known to suit gravel better than asphalt and snow. The Korean marque has also brought an engine upgrade to this week to further boost its performance.
The rally began in the best possible fashion for Hyundai as Fourmaux set the pace in the opening stage. The Frenchman took his fourth stage win of the season by 0.1s from Toyota’s Elfyn Evans, who impressed despite opening the road. The cleaning effect didn’t appear to be as dramatic, and if anything the surface started to break up for the later runners.
It proved to be a hard fought stage as Toyota’s Solberg, just missed out on stealing the stage win by 0.2s, having been up on the splits through the majority of the 15.08km test.
Hyundai’s improved pace was backed up by Dani Sordo, who logged the fourth best time, 1.2sec adrift of his team-mate Fourmaux.
Seven-time Rally Portugal winner and reigning world champion Ogier struggled with the balance of his GR Yaris. Ogier was the slowest Toyota, some five seconds away from the pace.
M-Sport-Ford opted to fit hard compound tyres all round across its three entries for Josh McErlean, Jon Armstrong and Mārtiņš Sesks, in a bid to save the allocation of 16 soft tyres for when the rain arrives on Saturday and Sunday.
It meant the crews struggled for grip but it was McErlean that came out on top piping Thierry Neuville, who had a half spin, to the eighth fastest time.
Stage two (Sever/Albergaria - 20.24km) proved much more of a challenge for those at the front of the road order due to the loose gravel.
Solberg, however, starting fourth on the road, blitzed the stage to leap from third overall to the rally lead.
The Toyota driver was 1.4sec faster than Hyundai’s Neuville, who despite struggling to trust the grip, vaulted from ninth overall to third.
Ogier managed to find an improvement in the stage to post a time 3.1s slower than pacesetter Solberg. It was enough to lift the Frenchman to fourth overall.
Fourth soon became third as Ogier moved ahead of Neuville after sharing the stage winning spoils with Evans on the day’s Figueira da Foz asphalt super special.
Neuville completed Thursday, 0.2s behind Ogier, and only 0.1sec ahead of Evans.
"It's nice when you are at least in some fight, especially in the front. That's what we are here for. Sadly we had a half spin in the first stage, in a hairpin and lost time. Some work to do for tomorrow for sure, but we're going to try,” said Neuville.
Toyota’s Sami Pajari and Takamoto Katsuta appeared to struggle starting high on the road order, ending the loop in sixth [+10.7s] and eighth [+15.9], sandwiching Hyundai’s Dani Sordo [+11.7s].
McErlean held ninth and headed M-Sport-Ford team-mates Armstrong and Sesks which rounded out the Rally1 runners.
Seven stages comprising 96.22km, punctuated by only a remote service, await the crews on Friday.
