Four WRC drivers' title contenders top timesheets but tire saving likely to have affected headline times
Photography by Hyundai & Toyota
Words by Mark Paulson
Ott Tänak set the pace in the first timed action of Rally Chile as World Rally Championship crews took on Thursday’s shakedown. The Hyundai driver was just 0.1 seconds faster than Kalle Rovanperä, whose Toyota team-mate Elfyn Evans was also within 0.3s of the pace.
With the third Toyota of Sébastien Ogier next, 0.9s shy of the Welshman, the four title contenders locked out the top of the timesheets. World champion Thierry Neuville languished in 10th.
But any notion that the 4.2-mile test offered a pointer of what to expect when the rally gets going for real on Friday was quickly dismissed by the drivers.
“It’s a useless shakedown,” was Ogier’s succinct verdict, implying that he would not be asking too much of his Hankook rubber ahead of the competitive action.
The WRC’s sole tire supplier made a late switch to its available allocations ahead of the event, offering crews four more softs than the usual option allocation. But with changeable weather, and uncertainty over the tires’ wear-rates, tire management is still expected to be crucial.
With shakedown opening at 9am local time, cool temperatures made for damp, slightly muddy conditions – especially after wet weather earlier in the week.
“Quite a lot more dampness and wetness than we anticipated really,” admitted Evans, who was uncertain how much of a disadvantage his opening the road on Friday would be. “It depends a lot on the conditions.”
Championship leader Evans was fastest on the opening run, before slipping to third
Rovanperä, second on the road, was hampered by intercom failure on his first run. But he reckoned the stage was not representative of what was to come.
“Quite different roads here and also conditions on the road,” said the Finn. “This has never been an easy rally when you start quite near the front, quite a lot of cleaning on Friday.”
Two-time Rally Chile winner Tänak played down any psychological advantage his previous record on the event offered. He said: “I guess we all had the same experience, we’ve all been here the same amount of times, so I guess there is no benefit really. It’s just a fun rally which I enjoy.”
His Hyundai team-mate Adrien Fourmaux was fifth fastest, 0.2s slower than Ogier. “It’s nice to see that we are all saving tires for the rally,” he said.
Sami Pajari, returning to an event he has previously contested in a Rally1 car for just the second time, was another 1.1s further back in sixth.
Conversely, his team-mate Takamoto Katsuta is one of the few Rally1 drivers lacking experience of the route, having been stood down for last year’s edition from which the stages are unchanged.
Seventh fastest on shakedown, and 1.1s slower than Pajari, Katsuta was not exuding confidence: “I try my best but it was quite a bit tricky on the recce with the fog and difficult to make quite good pacenotes,” he said.
Damp surface may dry over the course of Friday's stages
M-Sport’s Chile debutant Josh McErlean was eighth fastest, 7.7s off the ultimate pace and 3.9s down on Katsuta. The Irishman was 0.6s quicker than team-mate Grégoire Munster, ninth.
Neuville suffered a spin in a relatively low-speed right-hander near the start of his first run and reported that the rest of it had felt “s***” too. He improved on subsequent runs but still finished nearly 10s adrift of his team-mate’s pacesetting time.
The Rally1 field was rounded out by local driver Alberto Heller, back at the wheel of an M-Sport Puma for the first time since the 2023 event.
Nikolay Gryazin set the pace in WRC2, his Škoda Fabia RS Rally2 0.9s faster than the similar car of local driver Jorge Martínez Fontena. Gus Greensmith’s Škoda was next ahead of Jan Solans (Toyota GR Yaris Rally2) and Fabrizio Zaldivar (Škoda).
Points leader Oliver Solberg, who can seal the title this weekend, was sixth fastest. His sole run was 6.2s slower than Gryazin’s.
Words:Mark Paulson
Tags: Rally Chile, Rally Chile 2025, Shakedown, WRC, WRC 2025
Publish Date September 11, 2025 DirtFish
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