{"id":313140,"date":"2025-11-27T23:22:15","date_gmt":"2025-11-27T23:22:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/313140\/"},"modified":"2025-11-27T23:22:15","modified_gmt":"2025-11-27T23:22:15","slug":"puncture-doesnt-change-anything-for-wrc-title-bid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/313140\/","title":{"rendered":"Puncture doesn\u2019t change anything for WRC title bid"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kalle Rovanpera<\/a>\u00a0says a puncture\u00a0at Rally Saudi Arabia<\/a> doesn\u2019t\u00a0really change anything for his World Rally Championship title bid.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Toyota driver\u2019s chances of securing a third world title were slim heading into the weekend\u2019s season finale as he sits 24 points behind championship leader and team-mate Elfyn Evans<\/a>, who in turn leads Sebastien Ogier<\/a> by three points.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rovanpera\u2019s\u00a0title hopes suffered a blow on Thursday morning when he picked up a left-rear puncture in stage four [Khulays\u00a01, 11.33km]. The deflation cost the Finn 49.6s, dropping the two-time world champion from eighth to 10th position, behind Ogier and Evans.<\/p>\n

Rovanpera was at a loss to explain the puncture after revealing that he\u00a0didn\u2019t\u00a0hit any rocks: \u201cIt is like most of the punctures this year, it has just come from somewhere. I\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0know what the reason is for that to\u00a0be honest.<\/p>\n

\u201cI seem to have so many more punctures this year and this one was the same, you\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0feel anything and then suddenly you have a puncture.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u00a0doesn\u2019t\u00a0really change anything [for me]. We just hope to have a better afternoon. It will be super tough and already in the first two stages I was having to avoid a lot of stones, and there were two cars in front of me, so we will see how bad it will be.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Elfyn <\/p>\n

Elfyn Evans, Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT<\/p>\n

Photo by: Toyota Racing<\/p>\n

Evans kicking himself after clumsy error<\/p>\n

Championship leader Evans avoided major\u00a0delays,\u00a0but it proved to be a difficult morning for the Welshman, who ended the morning loop in eighth, 22.7s behind his nearest title rival Ogier holding seventh. The pair both struggled with the road cleaning effect on the dusty and rocky\u00a0gravel surface.<\/p>\n

Evans admitted he was too conservative in the day\u2019s opening sandy Dakar Rally-style stage, ceding\u00a012.8s to Ogier. A mistake at a junction on stage four also proved costly.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI was far too conservative on that first one stage really,\u00a0and that was the biggest mistake let\u2019s say,”\u00a0said Evans. \u201cThe second stage was\u00a0reasonably ok\u00a0and with the cleaning that was there,\u00a0I expected to lose more to Seb in a way. The last one the pace was not too bad compared to Seb but the mistake I made I was kicking myself over, as it was a bit of a clumsy error, so not ideal.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Evans,\u00a0however,\u00a0expects the afternoon pass through the stages to offer up a tougher challenge with more rocks set to\u00a0emerge\u00a0on the roads.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I suspect there will be rocks coming up from the ground and we saw in shakedown how quickly the roads were\u00a0evolving,\u00a0so\u00a0let\u2019s see,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Ogier was\u00a0relatively pleased\u00a0with his morning loop considering the\u00a0conditions, but\u00a0is also concerned about the conditions crews will face this afternoon. The Frenchman is adamant that\u00a0Rovanpera\u00a0will not be the last driver to suffer a puncture this weekend.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Sebastien <\/p>\n

Sebastien Ogier, Vincent Landais, Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT<\/p>\n

Photo by: Toyota Racing<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the end of the day we are in a fight with Elfyn and Kalle here and not really for the overall, so we focus on that, and so\u00a0far\u00a0we are on target,\u201d said Ogier.\u00a0\u201cKalle will not be the last puncture of the\u00a0weekend,\u00a0so we all know that. We will do our best to stay out of trouble.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere will be more rocks than this morning. With the soft ground you\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0really know where to expect them, so that is the difficulty for sure. In this kind of\u00a0event,\u00a0you always have a sense of caution for sure you cannot go fully on it. It might work for a little while but most probably not for long.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sesks\u00a0surprised to lead the rally<\/p>\n

Outside of the title race, the surprise of the morning was Martins Sesks<\/a>, who claimed two of the three stages to lead the rally by 1.3s from Hyundai\u2019s Adrien\u00a0Fourmaux<\/a>.\u00a0Sesks\u00a0could have claimed a clean sweep of stage wins had he not misjudged the same junction that caught out Evans in stage four.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sesks\u2019 surge to the lead of a WRC event for the first time in his career was made even more impressive given he has been out of the M-Sport Ford Puma since Finland in August.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt it was\u00a0okay,\u00a0and I understood the road cleaning [effect] and\u00a0everything,\u00a0but I didn\u2019t expect that [result] as I still made mistakes and everything,\u201d said\u00a0Sesks.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll three stages were\u00a0very different\u00a0but now the biggest thing is to watch out for the road conditions.\u00a0Of course,\u00a0when you see a bit ahead you can\u00a0brake\u00a0or go around the rocks but there are many places where you cannot do anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

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– The Autosport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kalle Rovanpera\u00a0says a puncture\u00a0at Rally Saudi Arabia doesn\u2019t\u00a0really change anything for his World Rally Championship title bid.\u00a0 The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":313141,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,177300,806,805,803,804,177301,177299,14640,85,32478,10277],"class_list":["post-313140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-kalle-rovanperu00e4","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-rally-saudi-arabia","tag-rovanpera-puncture-doesnu2019t-change-anything-for-wrc-title-bid","tag-saudi-arabia","tag-sports","tag-toyota-racing","tag-wrc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313140\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/313141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}