By Paul Evans
It’s a shame Elfyn Evans isn’t in a commanding Rally Mexico lead, as we’d have gone with the ‘cactus if you can’ headline – but, as expected, running first on the road on day one proved to be a big disadvantage. Yet the FIA World Rally Championship leader did exceptionally well to lose as little time as possible dealing with the worst of the loose gravel road conditions to keep himself very much in contention with two days of competition remaining.
Having been in second position after a pair of opening short street stages in Guanajuato on Thursday night, Evans dropped to seventh after the first loop of stages yesterday morning. But when road conditions were better for him in the afternoon, the Toyota Gazoo Racing World Rally Team driver was able to climb back up to third by the end of the day.
Co-driven by Scott Martin, Evans ended the first full day of action 33.2 seconds behind team-mate Sébastien Ogier, 20 seconds behind second place Teemu Suninen (Ford) and 0.2 seconds ahead of fourth placed Ott Tänak (Hyundai). Game on!
Evans certainly had a much better day than some of his rivals, not least Esapekka Lappi, whose Ford Fiesta WRC was destroyed by fire after SS7.
“It’s been a pretty difficult day opening the road, as we knew it would be,” said Evans. “But overall, it’s not been bad. The car was working generally very well.
“Both El Chocolate stages were the challenging stages to find a good feeling, but that was probably down to the road condition as the surface was very loose. In other places it went better than expected. We’ll just keep pushing as hard as we can and see what’s possible.”
Today’s route contains nine stages, including another three gravel stages run twice, two blasts around a race track in Leon and finally a street stage in Leon.
End of day two (Friday):
1 Sébastien Ogier/Julien Ingrassia (Toyota Yaris WRC) 1h23m09.2s
2 Teemu Suninen/Jarmo Lehtinen (Ford Fiesta WRC) +13.2s
3 Elfyn Evans/Scott Martin (Toyota Yaris WRC) +33.2s
4 Ott Tänak/Martin Järveoja (Hyundai i20 Coupe WRC) +33.4s
5 Kalle Rovanperä/Jonne Halttunen (Toyota Yaris WRC) +35.7s
6 Gus Greensmith/Elliott Edmondson (Ford Fiesta WRC) +1m16.8s
7 Pontus Tidemand/Patrik Barth (Škoda Fabia R5) +4m16.7s
8 Nikolay Gryazin/Yaroslav Fedorov (Hyundai i20 R5) +5m07.8s
9 Marco Bulacia/Giovanni Bernacchini (Citroën C3 R5) +5m54.3s
10 Emilio Fernández/Ruben Garcia (Škoda Fabia R5) +8m39.8s