Kalle Rovanpera tops the leaderboard for day one after finishing fastest above Thierry Neuville and Ott Tanak. The young Finn Rovenpera would prove he could right his wrongs this year in Croatia by getting off to a hot start. Rovenpera won three of the four stages in the morning loop but the tricky and changing conditions wouldn’t make it easy.
Teammate Elfyn Evans would see some of those conditions bring him some trouble after getting two punctures during the morning loop. With deflated tires, Evans fell back to sixth even though he held the fastest time on stage three. Even though his speed was excellent for the one-stage his luck wouldn’t improve on the day as he sits sixth overnight.
Unfortunately, Esapekka Lappi’s day came to an abrupt end when the driver made contact with rocks on the side of the road forcing him to retire for the day and restart with repairs tomorrow.
Repairs were required for the overnight second-place driver, Thierry Neuville, as the driver had a good start to the day until some alternator problems. Neuville had been following Rovenpera closely all day until an alternator issue disabled the car on a road section resulting in the Belgian pair pushing the car back to a late service arrival. While this setback resulted in a 40s time penalty, Neuville battled back in the final afternoon loop by winning a stage and keeping his pace up to hold on to second going into day 2.
Both Hyundai teammates, Ott Tanak and Oliver Solberg managed a relatively clean race day as the former finished third on the day and the latter finished fifth. Solberg would catch damage after aquaplaning slowing his pace a bit but enough to hold on to that number five spot.
Meanwhile, at M-Sport, the team struggled with multiple drivers from punctures to retires. Gus Greensmith would find himself with two punctures that slowed his pace significantly putting a damper on the start to his weekend. French driver Adrien Fourmaux, was another victim of aquaplaning as he found himself in the yard of a local gardener after sliding off a corner in into a civilians lawn. Craig Breen seemed to be the only one to escape drama, finishing the day with minimal issues at fourth just 12s behind Tanak.
Down in WRC2 Yohan Rossel leads the day by a healthy 36s ahead of Nikolay Gryazin.
Robert Virves leads Junior WRC after Jon Armstrong suffered a series of punctures handing the lead over to Virves.
