Rovanpera sets the pace on Rally Sweden shakedown from Lappi

The Toyota Gazoo Racing driver’s benchmark time was set on his third – and final – run through the short ‘Hakmark’ test, and was just a tenth of a second quicker than the I20 N Rally1 car of new Hyundai Motorsport signing, Esapekka Lappi.

Rovanpera – the winner of last year’s winter event – will run first on the road on Friday by virtue of the fact he is currently second in the points standings, and Rallye Monte-Carlo winner Sebastien Ogier is sitting out the event as part of his car-share programme.

His replacement – Takamoto Katsuta – went third quickest on his ‘works’ debut for the Japanese manufacturer, three tenths slower than the 2m 50.9sec time clocked by his Finnish team-mate.

A fourth go was needed before Elfyn Evans finally found his groove having initially struggled to improve upon his initial three attempts alongside Scott Martin. The Welshman admitted it was “quite narrow and tricky” and that made it difficult to “find a rhythm”.

Despite initially experiencing issues with the energy recovery system on his Hyundai supermini, Irishman Craig Breen ended the exercise fifth on the time sheets once a cure had been found by clocking in with a 2m 52.2s effort.

A below-par Thierry Neuville was content with sixth given the week he has just had in the build-up to round two. “I have been sick all week and I am not feeling so good, but hopefully we will be able to manage,” said the Belgian, who was forced to miss his pre-event test because of the flu.

“The snowbanks are really hard. It'’ quite fast in there and it’s a tricky shakedown but we had a clean run through.”

The first of the points-scoring M-Sport Ford Pumas was Ott Tanak in seventh – 2.4 seconds clear of eighth-placed team-mate Pierre-Louis Loubet who has already made it clear that progress and not points is the priority in the days ahead.

In WRC2, meanwhile, Oliver Solberg set the pace aboard his Monster Energy-backed Skoda Fabia RS Rally2 car. He pipped the Volkswagen Polo GTI R5 of WRC returnee Ole Christian Veiby by 0.3 seconds.