Pajari leads after dramatic day

Sami Pajari has the lead after the first 8 stages of WRC Croatia. He has a gap of 13,7 seconds down to Thierry Neuville on second place. Photo: Christian Flodin / FotoINorr

Drama struck early in Croatia, where runner-up Oliver Solberg missed in a corner and had to yield early. Championship leader Elfvyn Evans had a big lead after two stages, 15,8 seconds over second place Sami Pajari. But too high speed into a corner on SS3 ended the day for Evans. That meant that two of the favourites on beforehand were gone from the podium on the first loop of the rally.
With two of the main threats gone, things still didn’t go too easy for Pajari. On the second loop, Thierry Neuville started to gaining on Pajari, from his third place 8,4 seconds behind after SS4, to second place and 6,3 seconds after SS7. On the eighth stage Pajari did the fastest time, over 13 seconds faster than the second fastest driver, overall third placed Takamoto Katsuta. The newly winner of Safari rally is just under a second behind Neuville in the overall standings after the first day.
After the top trio, there is a big gap to the next drivers. Hyundai part season driver Hayden Paddon is on p4, just over a minute behind Katsuta, and still has 40 seconds down to the third Hyundai driver, Adrien Fourmaux. Joshua McErlean got a puncture on SS7 and lost a lot of time, on p11 overall, after 5 WRC2 drivers. McErlean managed to get his M-sport over the finish line of the stages, apart from his teammate Jon Armstrong. Armstrong had a strong start of the rally, with p3 overall before a puncture and then ran wide, hitting a bank and retiring on SS4.
In the strong WRC2 field, Lancia had a good start with p1 and p2. Yohan Rossel is the fastest driver, 22,1 seconds faster than Nikolay Gryazin. Alejandro Cachon is the third fastest WRC2 driver, 20 seconds behind Gryazin.

Written by: Christian Flodin