Toyota’s Elfyn Evans has held onto the Rally Chile lead after stewards rejected a protest from the Hyundai World Rally Championship team against the reallocation of a notional stage time.
Hyundai’s Ott Tanak ended Friday’s six stages with a 0.4-second margin over Evans before stewards received a request to review the notional time issued to Evans following the cancellation of stage one.
Only Thierry Neuville, Tanak and Sebastien Ogier successfully navigated through stage one (Pulperia, 19.72km) before officials were forced to cancel the test on spectator safety grounds.
Notional times based on Neuville’s effort (the slowest time), were awarded to the rest of the Rally1 field, who were forced to complete the stage in road mode. This was, however, subject to revision after the second pass of the test later in the day (stage four).
Following these runs, the clerk of the course received a request to review the allocated time awarded to Evans.
After reviewing the times posted in the second pass of the stage, Evans, M-Sport’s Adrien Fourmaux and Toyota’s Sami Pajari have been issued new notional times for stage one.
As a result, Evans’ new time was two seconds faster than Tanak instead of being 1.4s slower, handing the Toyota driver a revised three-second rally lead.
Hyundai subsequently lodged a protest against the clerk of the course’s decision on Friday night. Following a hearing attended by representatives from Hyundai and Toyota, stewards elected to reject the protest, ensuring Evans’ reallocated notional time stands heading into Saturday’s six stages.
“The protester’s representative explained that the stages [SS1 and SS4] were conducted differently and this may have accounted for differences in the respective stage times,” read the stewards report.
“Mr. [Tolga] Ozakinci [Hyundai team manager] stated that, in their opinion, the ideal principle for allocating notional times should be based on the fastest stage time achieved by the crew to complete SS1 [crew of car no. 17 Sebastien Ogier/Vincent Landais] rather than the slowest time achieved by the crew to complete SS1 [i.e. crew of car bo. 11 Thierry Neuville/Martijn Wydaeghe].
“Mr. Ozakinci agreed with the chairperson that the authority judging fairness lies with the clerk of course’s determination, as stated within Article 52 of the 2024 FIA WRC sporting regulations.
“However, the competitor believed that the principle proposed by them was…
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