Thierry Neuville replaces Elfyn Evans at the top of the Rally Monte-Carlo on Saturday morning, but the three-way battle for victory continues
The lead changed hands on Saturday morning at the Rallye Monte-Carlo, the season opener of the 2024 World Rally Championship (WRC): After Toyota driver Elfyn Evans had been in the lead for ten special stages, he was ousted from his place in the sun by Thierry Neuville (Hyundai) on the eleventh stage.
As a result, the three-way battle for victory at the first round of the season is coming to a head. After eleven of 17 special stages, Neuville has a 5.1-second lead over Evans, while Sebastien Ogier (Toyota) is only 7.7 seconds behind Neuville in third place and still has a chance of taking his tenth victory at the Rally Monte-Carlo.
Neuville was particularly impressive on the ninth stage at the start of the day. On the 19.79-kilometre “Esparron – Oze 1” stage, he took 9.6 seconds off Evans and as much as 18.1 seconds off Ogier. The Frenchman admitted afterwards that the conditions were better than his gravel spies had reported. “My information was probably too much on the safe side,” Ogier told Rally.TV.
On the tenth stage, Ogier hit back with the fastest time, while Neuville was again quicker than Evans and pushed the Welshman off the top spot by 0.9 seconds. However, Evans was slowed down on this stage by misfires in his hybrid drive. At the end of the morning, the Belgian was a further 4.2 seconds faster than Evans
Tänak gets off to a better start on his Hyundai comeback
And this despite the fact that Neuville was not one hundred percent satisfied with his performance. “Sometimes I don’t understand the instructions [from the co-driver] and then I hesitate. My write-up was a bit slow at the end, but it’s a new stage, we did what we could,” the Belgian told Rally.TV.
Ott Tänak, who is getting better and better in his first rally after returning to the Hyundai works team, is still in fourth place. The Estonian set his first fastest time on the eleventh stage – at the same time as his team-mate Neuville. Fifth is Adrien Fourmaux (Ford).
Sixth is his M-Sport teammate Gregoire Munster (Ford), who set an exclamation mark on the first stage of the day with the third-fastest time. As a result, the Luxembourger also overtook Andreas Mikkelsen (Hyundai) in the overall standings, who continues to struggle on his return to the premier class of the World Rally Championship
Exciting battle for WRC2 victory
An example of this was a driving error by the Norwegian at the start of the day on the ninth special stage. Mikkelsen hit the brakes on the very first corner and skidded off the track with the wheels locked.
Takamoto Katusta (Toyota) improved to eighth place overall after his slip-up on Friday morning. Behind him, the lead in the WRC2 standings remains fiercely contested. Nikolai Gryasin (Citroen), Pepe Lopez (Skoda) and Yohan Rossel (Citroen) are separated by just 14.6 seconds.
On Saturday afternoon, the three special stages of the morning will be driven again at the Rally Monte-Carlo
