Kalle Rovanperä remains firmly on course to become the first-ever winner of a WRC round held on Gran Canarian soil. The Toyota GAZOO Racing star will carry a commanding 45.2sec advantage into Sunday’s five-stage final leg, leading an all-GR Yaris Rally1 top four.
Arriving at this fourth round 57 points adrift of the championship lead, Rovanperä has found a rhythm that nobody else has been able to match. He won six of Saturday’s asphalt stages to almost double his overnight advantage — which stood at 26.8sec on Friday — before Elfyn Evans prevented a clean sweep by topping the evening’s super special inside the Gran Canaria Arena. Even so, Rovanperä has claimed victory on 12 of the 13 stages run so far.
“Everything has been going really well again today,” said Rovanperä. “The stages had a bit of a different style to yesterday and in the first two I was maybe not so comfortable, but I really enjoyed the third one that was more flowing. The afternoon was especially good: we made some really small changes to the car and it felt even better, which was nice. I hope we can have the same feeling tomorrow and that everything continues to come comfortably, because we would need to try and take as many points as we can.”
Sébastien Ogier holds second place, 22.9sec ahead of Evans, consolidating his runner-up spot. The Frenchman, who virtually conceded his hopes of victory on Friday, has since focused on pulling further clear of Evans, doubling his buffer after beating his Welsh team-mate across five stages.
As it stands, Evans is on course to extend his championship lead beyond 40 points, with nearest rivals Thierry Neuville and Ott Tänak enduring fraught weekends. Both Hyundai drivers sit sixth and seventh respectively, behind their team-mate Adrien Fourmaux, after struggling with set-up issues believed to be linked to differential settings.
Takamoto Katsuta sits fourth, just 25.7sec ahead of Fourmaux in fifth. Benefiting from Sami Pajari’s retirement after crashing into a wooden barrier on the penultimate stage, Fourmaux now occupies fifth despite stalling in the last stage, while Neuville and Tänak remain within touching distance of the Frenchman.
Elsewhere, Grégoire Munster’s hopes took a hit when he required spectator assistance after running wide and beaching his M-Sport Ford Puma Rally1 on SS10. The incident cost him three minutes and dropped him to 13th overall, promoting WRC2 frontrunners Yohan Rossel and Alejandro Cachón, as well as Munster’s team-mate Josh McErlean, into eighth, ninth, and 10th respectively.
Sunday’s finale features just under 60 kilometres of competitive action, culminating with the bonus points-paying Wolf Power Stage, which wraps up the event at 13:15 local time.
