Rovanpera emerged as the class of the field winning three of the four morning stages held on slippery wet asphalt as he made the most of the clean conditions being first on the road.
The Toyota driver ended the loop with a 12.5s lead over Neuville, who produced a solid display for Hyundai, with teammate Ott Tanak,47.3s adrift in third.
Craig Breen will head in to the afternoon stages in fourth, only 1.9s shy of the final podium position. M-Sport teammate Gus Greensmith completed the distance in fifth. But it proved to be a challenging day for the Ford squad, which lost Adrien Fourmaux to a spin off the road on stage 3, while Pierre-Louis Loubet retired after suffering three punctures in two stages.
Elfyn Evans also suffered two front-left punctures across the morning stages which left him 2m01s adrift in eighth, behind Oliver Solberg and Takamoto Katsuta after Toyota’s Esapekka Lappi retired on the opening stage.
The rally began in an eventful fashion as crews grappled with the slippery conditions and a road that became increasingly dirtier as drivers dragged mud onto the surface from cutting corners.
Rovanpera set a blistering time on the first test, winning the stage by 4.1s from Neuville, who was lucky to escape from an excursion into a ditch on the exit of the third corner.
The Belgian labelled the stage “horrible” and the challenging road was winning few fans among the drivers.
Breen emerged third-fastest ahead of Tanak while Greensmith was fortunate to wrestle his car back on the road after a wild moment that resulted in his Ford Puma climbing a grass bank, narrowly avoiding a tree.
Solberg also lost time to a spin but worse was to come for Toyota’s Lappi and Evans, and M-Sport’s Loubet.
Lappi clipped a rock while cutting a right-hander which damaged his front-right suspension, ending his day early on his Croatia debut, while Evans picked up a front-left puncture and lost 1m20s.
Meanwhile, Loubet could count himself unlucky as the…
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