Sébastien Ogier, Kalle Rovanperä and Adrien Fourmaux are split by under four seconds after Thursday
Photography by Toyota
Words by Luke Barry
Sébastien Ogier leads Central European Rally after a short opening day, but Toyota team-mate Kalle Rovanperä is just 1.6 seconds behind.
The third-to-last round of this year’s World Rally Championship marks a return to Tarmac for the first time since April, and Ogier was first onto the stages courtesy of his narrow two-point championship lead.
Thursday’s leg of the event consisted of two passes of the Golf und Therme stage, run over three hours apart from one another. Eight-time world champion Ogier won the first pass, but Rovanperä beat him on the second – albeit by just 0.1s.
“A clean start,” Ogier surmised, “tomorrow will be a lot more challenging probably. It’s hard to know what’s going to happen with the weather, and the Czech stages are bumpy with old Tarmac and dirt, so let’s see.”
Adrien Fourmaux had shared second overall with Rovanperä after SS1 but dropped to 2.3s behind, and 3.9s off the lead, as he was hampered as one of the later runners in fading light.
“Well for sure it’s not really fair that we run the stage in the dark, but it’s part of the game,” Fourmaux commented. “For sure we cannot beat them when it’s dark for us but light for them. It’s OK.”
Sami Pajari has made an impressive start to CER to lie equal fourth overall with Takamoto Katsuta, with title contender Elfyn Evans 0.4s behind them both in sixth.
That was until the Welshman was handed a five-second time penalty for hitting a bale on SS1 and therefore being deemed to have not followed the correct rally route. He’s now eighth, 11.0s off the lead.
Ott Tänak is sixth and not totally at-one yet with a specification of i20 N Rally1 he hasn’t driven since Safari Rally Kenya, but did move ahead of team-mate Thierry Neuville by 0.2s on SS2. The pair lie 6.1s and 6.3s adrift of the lead repseticely.
The two M-Sports of Grégoire Munster and Josh McErlean are ninth and 10th, 15.4s and 25.1s shy of Ogier.
Words:Luke Barry
Tags: Central European Rally, Central European Rally 2025, WRC, WRC 2025
Publish Date October 16, 2025 DirtFish 
https://dirtfish-editorial.s3-accelerate.amazonaws.com/2025/10/lBYMHaSW-OGIER12CER25tb103-780x520.jpg October 16, 2025
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