At the end of Saturday evening, Esapekka Lappi manages his lead in Sweden with Adrien Fourmaux and Elfyn Evans following him.
Esapekka Lappi reels in scoring a back-to-back victory for Hyundai Motorsport in 2024 and his goal was to control the gap he built since Friday after Takamoto Katsuta's retirement.
Adrien Fourmaux remains second overall and was up on the second split of Stage 12, but he slowed down on the last section due to the rocks as he did not want to carry a puncture. Finally, he almost went off on the same spot as his teammate, but luckily for him he was able to continue in Stage 15 despite his hitting a snowbank.
Elfyn Evans completes the top three and set the fastest time in SS12, but he was not unable to catch the M-Sport driver on the classification as Fourmaux was losing a couple of seconds in every Saturday evening stage. He lost almost twelve seconds in Stage 15 as he could not find grip with his Yaris and did not have enough tyre left.
Thierry Neuville gained one place after the end of Stage 12 and is now fourth while he was very lucky in Stage 12 after his hitting a snowbank. However, he was the fastest driver in SS13, SS14 and SS15, but he mentioned that his mechanics must do some changes to the differential for Sunday.
Oliver Solberg dropped to fifth position and three stages remaining to claim his first victory of the season with Toksport and Skoda Motorsport.
Gregoire Munster, Kalle Rovanpera and Ott Tanak are outside the top ten.
Munster ran wide in Stage 13, as his Puma was not in the line, and wanted to do some adjustments for the next stages. In addition to that, he had a moment at high speed in SS14 as his car went straight on, but he had to drop more than 14 minutes in Stage 15 as the wheels and the handbrake locked-up and he was not able to turn resulting in getting stuck in a snowbank. The incident happened just three kilometers before the end of SS15.
Rovanpera said at the end of Stage 14 that the brakes of his Yaris were soft 4 Km into SS14, thus his job was to try to fix the brake issues for the final stage of the day.
Watch below the stage times:
Watch below the overall classification after SS15:
Photo Credits: Hyundai
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