“There’s still a long way to go. And these are tough roads. Today was good. I have some experience here, but not as much as some of the drivers. Tomorrow I need to look after the car.” said Tanak.
Day 2 is going to be a day to forget for Czech driver Martin Prokop. He caught the failing MINI of Daniel Olivera and losing 10secs in the Brazilian's dust. His car caught fire on SS11 after a leaking power steering pump leaked fuel onto the exhaust, causing the leaked power steering fluid to ignite. He pulled over to retire, but the fire extinguished itself, so he continued, to see if it would catch fire again. It didn't, but it lost him a lot of time.
“The fire was coming into the car. I thought we were going to have to stop. We had decided to pull over and retire, but then the fire went out, so we thought we would carry on and see what happened. See if it went on fire again later in the stage. It did catch fire again, but it wasn’t so bad this time, just a small one. But it cost us lots of time.” said the 28 year old.
Juho Hanninen was fastest out of the blocks after service, but Tanak responded, adding to his perfect complement of fastest times before service. Hanninen went fastest on the final stage, but Tanak still goes into Sunday with 48secs in hand.
“I tried to take time from Tanak but it was tough. We lost some time in the dust this morning, but otherwise it’s been okay. The car is running well, we have no problems, but we have to go faster. He is far away, but I am trying.” said the reigning IRC Champion.
Third is Nasser Al-Attiyah, fourth is Martin Prokop, who suffered a four minute penalty, while fifth is being held by Bernardo Sousa, who is nursing a sore arm, the legacy of overshooting a junction, and finding a large rock with his side of the car.
Hermann Gassner is sixth, Karl Kruda is seventh and Frigyes Turan is eighth. Turan is 40mins behind Tanak.
In the WRC Academy, Egon Kaur took the win on the second round of the Academy.
Kaur looked to be out of the fight for the win, however, when he crashed off the road on SS2 and dropped 4mins. He then produced a mature drive, taking five stage wins and the rally lead on SS10.
“It’s crazy. The plan was to keep going and remain focussed, but I really didn’t think I’d be back in the lead by lunchtime today. To think I’m leading after going off for so long yesterday, and now I might even win two rounds out of two of the WRC Academy is amazing.” he said.
A cautious drive over the final stages left him with a lead of over 1min 42secs over Miguel Baldoni. Fredrick Ahlin took third at the end of the rally, and lead after leader Christian Riedemann retired with drive shaft failure on Saturday's opener. He then fell to fourth, but took third after Sergey Karyakin landed very hard after the infamous Monte Lerno jump.
Jan Cerny, Brendan Reeves and Andrea Crugnola all retired on Day 1, but they returned and took fourth, fifth and sixth, respectively.
Kilkenny driver Craig Breen was another driver to return to competition on Day 2, and took two fastest stage times, fighting his way up to fifth, but a rear hub failure on SS14 lost him 3mins. Breen's Fiesta struggled out of the stage and his co-driver Gareth Roberts had to hang out of the window of the car to balance the car. Breen now sits 8th in the championship.
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