Evans leads Ypres Rally after Friday morning loop

The Toyota Gazoo Racing driver Elfyn Evans tops the timing board after the four first stages of the 2022 Ypres Rally in Belgium and he is holding off the Hyundai Shell Mobis´ Ott Tänak with a lead of 2.3 seconds as they are heading to the midday service.

The Welshman took over the rally lead early on as the Finnish teammate Kalle Rovanperä crashed out on SS2 this morning, Rovanperä was leading the rally after the opening stage but because of his heavy roll, he will not restart the rally anymore this weekend.

Both Evans and Tänak have been complaining about they haven´t felt comfortable in the cars throughout the morning twisty and narrow Flanders farm stages. Tänak who is now the one that goes out first on the road had cleaner stages than when Evans went and could close down the gap to just six-tenths of a second by the penultimate test. However, Evans responded fast on the final stage of Langemark at the morning loop and took back 2.3 seconds on Tänak.

Last year´s rally winner and home crowd favourite Thierry Neuville is in third with 6.5 seconds back after a shaky start on his home rally, on the opening stage he overcooked a junction and there he lost around 10 seconds but throughout the morning he has fought back. Esapekka Lappi is trailing Neuville with 12.4 seconds behind in fourth and was the last driver to complete the stage in dry conditions.

Craig Breen is the leading M-Sport driver as teammate Adrien Fourmaux who has been fighting for the fourth position lost over a minute when the rain fell down the order to eight overall. Gus Greensmith is in sixth and squeezed in between the Fords in seventh is Oliver Solberg.

Rounding up the top 10 are the two WRC2 drivers of Stéphane Lefebvre and Andreas Mikkelsen in ninth and tenth respectively. Takamoto Katsuta lost four minutes as the transmission in his Toyota had a failure and had to go back to service in full electric mode.

The rally continues this afternoon with another go through the same four stages, with a rainy forecast promised for the rest of day, the rally will be quite challenging.