It was an early start for the teams with shakedown at 8am! Beautiful conditions awaited them all. A real winter wonderland!
Shakedown was saw a welcome return for Mads Ostberg in a Citroen C3, and for a while, he was fastest of all, finally finishing just behind Thierry who emerged fastest by just 3 tenths of a second on the 6.8km stage held on the roads around Skalla. Elfyn Evans suffered some problems with the electrics, but once those had been solved, set a very good time.
Shakedown Standings
Neuville / Gilsoul (Hyundai i20 WRC) 4:17.3
Ostberg / Eriksen (Citroën C3 WRC) 4:17.6
Ogier / Ingrassia (Ford Fiesta WRC) 4:18.1
Meeke / Nagle (Citroën C3 WRC) 4:18.3
Tänak / Jarveoja (Toyota Yaris WRC) 4:18.7
Mikkelsen / Jaeger (Hyundai i20 WRC) 4:18.8
Latvala / Anttila (Toyota Yaris WRC) 4:19.0
Breen / Martin (Citroën C3 WRC) 4:19.1
Suninen / Markkula (Ford Fiesta WRC) 4:19.2
Evans / Barritt (Ford Fiesta WRC) 4:19.3
As usual, it was a really close-run thing.
Moving onto the first stage, we saw the cars go head-to-head around the 1.9km Karlstad stage. Emerging fastest, was young Estonian, Ott Tanak with Jari-Matti just three tenths off in second and Mads showing he’s right on the pace a further three tenths behind.
| End of day one (Thursday):
1 Ott Tänak/Martin Järveoja (Toyota Yaris WRC) 1m32.7s 2 Jari-Matti Latvala/Miikka Anttila (Toyota Yaris WRC) +0.3s 3 Mads Ostberg/Torstein Eriksen (Citroen C3 WRC) +0.6s 4 Kris Meeke/Paul Nagle (Citroen C3 WRC) +0.9s 5 Andreas Mikkelsen/Anders Jaeger (Hyundai i20 Coupe WRC) +0.9s 6 Thierry Neuville/Nicolas Gilsoul (Hyundai i20 Coupe WRC) +1.0s 7 Hayden Paddon/Sebastian Marshall (Hyundai i20 Coupe WRC) +2.1s 8 Esapekka Lappi/Janne Ferm (Toyota Yaris WRC) +2.2s 9 Sebastien Ogier/Julien Ingrassia (Ford Fiesta WRC) +2.5s 10 Craig Breen/Scott Martin (Citroen C3 WRC) +2.9 |
Tomorrow’s sees seven stages held, of which two are run fully in Norway and one which crosses the border. Let’s see what the day brings us!
Friday’s stages
6.00am: Start day 2 and Service A (Torsby – 15 mins)
7.55am: SS 2 – Hof-Finnskog 1 (21,26 km)
9.07am: SS 3 – Svullrya 1 (24,88 km)
9.54am: SS 4 – Röjden 1 (19,13 km)
11.31am: Service B (Torsby – 30 mins)
1.41pm: SS 5 – Hof-Finnskog 2 (21,26 km)
3.03pm: SS 6 – Svullrya 2 (24,88 km)
3.50pm: SS 7 – Röjden 2 (19,13 km)
4.56pm: SS 8 – Torsby 1 (9,56 km)
5.31pm: Flexi Service C (Torsby – 45 mins)