Rally of the Canary Islands – Rovanperä nears perfection, his rivals resigned

• He is undoubtedly the man of the weekend: Kalle Rovanperä is way above the rest in Gran Canaria. The Finn puts in an incredible performance on the Rally of the Canary Islands since Friday morning and has signed twelve (!) consecutive special stage victories on the Spanish archipelago! Untouchable and ruthless, the double world rally champion literally crushes the competition: even Sébastien Ogier, with his eight world titles, cannot fight and admits defeat fairly!
• Overall, Kalle Rovanperä is 45 seconds ahead of his teammate at Toyota after SS13. Unfortunately, he won't be a clean sweep this weekend: the Finn was beaten by Elfyn Evans (by only 0 seconds...) during the Super Special stage held in Las Palmas this Saturday evening. Sébastien's record Loeb – the only driver to have won all the special stages of a single rally during the 2005 Tour de Corse – is still going strong!
• Although Sébastien Ogier and Elfyn Evans tried to resist in the morning, playing on the times of their Finnish teammate, the two drivers found themselves powerless and began to secure their position in the afternoon. "A good afternoon for us, we had fun in the car. We just lacked a bit of speed compared to Kalle.", recognized the Gapençais.
• Toyota could legitimately dream of a quintuple on this Rally of the Canary Islands, so evident is their superiority on this new event on the calendar WRCUnfortunately, while he was putting in a good performance, Sami Pajari made a mistake on SS12 and hit a wooden barrier at high speed, destroying the front right of his Yaris in the collision. A fairly violent impact that forced the rookie to retire, having been in 4th place overall before his accident.
• Sami Pajari's retirement allowed all his pursuers to gain a position. Takamoto Katsuta thus climbed to 4th place in the general classification, 1'43″9 behind the leader Kalle Rovanperä. Above all, Adrien fourmaux enters the Top 5 of the rally. A small consolation for Hyundai who, like Friday, did not find the solutions to improve their performance in Gran Canaria. The South Korean machines are still lagging behind and the three drivers are relegated behind the Toyotas in 5th, 6th and 7th places, far from the podium.
• Sami Pajari wasn't the only one to have had a track excursion this Saturday afternoon: before him, Grégoire Munster had gone off course on SS11. Stuck in the bushes, the driver M-Sport was able to get going again thanks to the intervention of spectators. In his mishap, the Belgian-Luxembourger lost more than three minutes and finds himself outside the Top 10.

A lucky escape for Munster 🫣#WRC | #RallyIslasCanarias 🇮🇨 pic.twitter.com/jo4LycdEss

— FIA World Rally Championship (@OfficialWRC) April 26, 2025

• In WRC2, Yohan Rossel continues to lead the Canary Islands Rally. While the Frenchman lost two stages to his direct rivals in the morning, he made up for lost time in the afternoon with a clean sweep of the second loop. After twelve stages, the Citroën driver has a lead of 18 seconds over Alejandro Cachon and 8 seconds over Nikolay Gryazin. Léo Rossel, who was in 42th place in the category, lost everything on SS6 after an accident following a failed braking attempt.

WRC – Canary Islands Rally
ES13 – General classification

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