Elfyn Evans has taken the lead of Rally Finland after taking a clean sweep of stage wins on Saturday morning.
Evans won the opening stage of the day by a small margin of 2 tenths over Craig Breen. In the following Päijälä test, the Welshman took the lead of the rally after overtaking both Tänak and Breen in the overall standings thanks to a stage win with the biggest margin so far.
In SS9, Evans was 1.7 seconds faster than his team mate Rovanperä but extended his lead over Breen by 3.1 seconds to 4 seconds in total. Breen couldn’t match Evans’ pace in SS10 by going 1.6 seconds slower than his Toyota rival. Which meant that Evans’ took a clean sweep of stage wins on Saturday morning. At the end of the loop, Evans’ lead is 5.6 seconds over Breen with Tänak in third, 9.7 seconds behind the leader.
Rovanperä, Katsuta & Solberg crash out
Kalle Rovanperä crashed out in the final stage of the morning loop. The Finn overcorrected oversteer in a sequence of fast corners and hit a pile of stones. The Toyota driver had to retire with front-end damage to his car.
Takamoto Katsuta went off the road in SS8 as he hit a bank and stranded off the road and wasn’t able to continue as a result.
In WRC2, Oliver Solberg crashed hard in the opening stage of the day (Crew OK).
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WRC Rally Finland 2021 – Classification after SS10 (Saturday mid-day)
| # | Drivers | Car | Time / Diff. to 1st |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | Evans / Martin | Toyota Yaris WRC | 1:20:15.6 |
| 2. | Breen / Nagle | Hyundai i20 Coupé WRC | +5.6 |
| 3. | Tänak / Järveoja | Hyundai i20 Coupé WRC | +9.7 |
| 4. | Lappi / Ferm | Toyota Yaris WRC | +33.3 |
| 5. | Neuville / Wydaeghe | Hyundai i20 Coupé WRC | +53.4 |
| 6. | Ogier / Ingrassia | Toyota Yaris WRC | +1:06.3 |
| 7. | Greensmith / Patterson | Ford Fiesta WRC | +2:55.6 |
| 8. | Fourmaux / Coria | Ford Fiesta WRC | +3:46.9 |
| 9. | Suninen / Markkula | Volkswagen Polo GTI R5 | +5:38.3 |
| 10. | Lindholm / Hämäläinen | Skoda Fabia Rally2 Evo | +5:44.1 |
Photo: Red Bull Content Pool