Elfyn Evans will once again take on road-sweeping duties at this week’s Rally Chile, with the WRC leader running first on the road. He is not expecting an easy task.
“Of course, we want to do our best. However, it is really difficult to judge how things will ultimately play out here. I think we now have a lot more to think about to just go fast. I don’t mean the championship wise, but we have these tyres that keep failing,” Evans told RallyJournal.com ahead of the rally.
Evans admitted that while the team has a few more tyres available, there is still uncertainty surrounding them based on what happened in Paraguay. The road surface in Chile is extremely hard, so tyres remain a talking point.
Some light rain may arrive on Thursday evening and Friday morning, which could make Evans’s task slightly easier. “If the conditions remain like this, it will be a disaster. Friday is particularly bad. The first stage is bad, the second is bad and the third is perhaps slightly less bad, but the first two are really bad,” Evans said. “There is of course a chance of rain, so I hope it comes.”
Evans finished fourth at the previous round in Paraguay. He admitted making a slight misjudgement after Friday’s puncture disaster. There was no similar drama on Saturday. “There was not really anything wrong in Paraguay. After all the punctures on Friday, I just drove quite cautiously on Saturday in the places that felt tricky because I expected the same thing to happen again. But that was probably a step too far, because nobody really had any problems on Saturday,” Evans admitted.
“I simply misjudged the situation. When all the tyres failed on Friday even though I was driving right in the middle of the road, I probably did not read Saturday’s conditions well enough. That was really all there was to it.”
As the championship leader, Evans needs to maintain consistency. But the challenge in Chile is not just about speed; it’s also about managing tyres and the abrasive roads. The Toyota driver hopes that rain could be his saving grace.
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