Rally Croatia 2023 – Sunday afternoon
Elfyn Evans stormed to victory in Rally Croatia on Sunday afternoon, climbing to the top of the FIA World Rally Championship standings in the process.
A mistake by Thierry Neuville on Saturday morning propelled the Welshman to first place overall, and he pulled away from M-Sport Ford Puma driver Ott Tänak for the rest of the rally to win by 27.0 seconds with a Toyota GR Yaris.
The win, his first since Secto Rally Finland in 2021 and the first of his career on tarmac, lifted Evans from fifth to first in the drivers’ championship standings. He is tied on points with Sébastien Ogier after the fourth round of 13, with Kalle Rovanperä just one point behind and Tänak three further behind.
“Obviously we’ve been working for this for a long time, but it all seems so insignificant at this point, this is the bottom line,” Evans said. “After the focus of the weekend, we all missed our friend again. Immediately after crossing the finish line, that’s all we could think about. We promised Craig’s family that we would enjoy the weekend, and we did. We’re all thinking about them right now.”
His Toyota Gazoo Racing team maintained their unbeaten Rally Croatia record while extending their manufacturers’ championship lead over Hyundai Motorsport to 29 points.
The first pure asphalt race of the season offered tremendous action, with Tänak looking set to become a real threat to Evans as he set a furious pace on Saturday afternoon. However, a transmission problem later on the penultimate day hampered the Estonian’s charge and he crossed the finish line 31.6 seconds behind Esapekka Lappi.
Lappi lacked confidence on some of the dirtier sections of the road, but consistency rewarded him with his first Hyundai i20 N podium, a welcome boost after falling out of the lead at the previous round.
Behind him was a trio of Toyotas led by reigning champion Rovanperä, 19.7 seconds behind. The Finn had dropped out of the top ten after changing a wheel in ES2 on Friday, but climbed back up the leaderboard with an impressive recovery drive. He overtook Sébastien Ogier on the final morning to take fourth place overall, beating his team-mate by just 9.7 seconds.
Ogier, who only led the championship before this rally, was left to rue what might have been. Although he overtook winner Evans in 1min 28.0sec at the finish, he also stopped to change a wheel while leading on Friday and was dealt further blows in the form of time penalties. In total, the loss of time was approximately two and a half minutes.
Takamoto Katsuta made it four Toyotas in the top six ahead of Pierre-Louis Loubet, who nursed his Puma to the finish with bent steering. WRC2 competitors Yohan Rossel, Nikolay Gryazin and Oliver Solberg completed the qualifying, although the latter was not registered to score points in the championship.
Yohan Rossel/Arnaud Dunand secured victory by 16.1 seconds in the WRC2 category with a Citroën C3 incorporated in PH Sport. It is the second victory of the French from two starters so far this season.
Class wise, Nikolay Gryazin/Konstantin Aleksandrov (Toksport WRT2 Škoda Fabia RS) took the WRC2 Challenger victory.
