Oliver Solberg grabs Rally Portugal lead as Hyundai shows early speed

TL;DR

Oliver Solberg leads Rally Portugal after the first leg, with a 3.4s advantage over Adrien Fourmaux. Sébastien Ogier sits in third place, 7.2s behind the leader.

Key points

Oliver Solberg leads Rally Portugal
3.4s margin over Adrien Fourmaux
Sébastien Ogier in third place
First pure gravel event of the season
No service until the end of Friday

Oliver SolbergAdrien FourmauxSébastien OgierRally Portugal

Motorsport photo

Toyota’s Oliver Solberg moved into an early lead at Rally Portugal at the end of the opening leg of the first pure gravel event of the World Rally Championship season.

Solberg navigated through two traditional rough gravel stages and an asphalt super special with a 3.4s margin over Hyundai’s Adrien Fourmaux. Toyota’s Sébastien Ogier recovered from a slow start to sit third, 7.2s from the lead.

"I just tried to be clean and take it easy. We have no service [until the end of Friday] so you don't want to touch anything. It has been an ok start. It's a long way to go and every day is going to be different,” said Solberg.

Hyundai had targeted this weekend’s rally as an opportunity to begin to turn around its fortunes given its i20 N is known to suit gravel better than asphalt and snow. The Korean marque has also brought an engine upgrade to this week to further boost its performance.

The rally began in the best possible fashion for Hyundai as Fourmaux set the pace in the opening stage. The Frenchman took his fourth stage win of the season by 0.1s from Toyota’s Elfyn Evans, who impressed despite opening the road. The cleaning effect didn’t appear to be as dramatic, and if anything the surface started to break up for the later runners.

It proved to be a hard fought stage as Toyota’s Solberg, just missed out on stealing the stage win by 0.2s, having been up on the splits through the majority of the 15.08km test.

Hyundai’s improved pace was backed up by Dani Sordo, who logged the fourth best time, 1.2sec adrift of his team-mate Fourmaux.

Seven-time Rally Portugal winner and reigning world champion Ogier struggled with the balance of his GR Yaris. Ogier was the slowest Toyota, some five seconds away from the pace.