Onto the second full day then and with 112km’s over seven stages the crews had a good challenge ahead of them. Takamoto would open the road throughout the day after returning following the incident which put them out on Friday. Of course, Kalle was leading the rally would be the final car to complete the stage of the Rally1 cars.
First up then was SS9 Carmen del Paraná 1 – 18.67 km and Kalle was fastest from Ott and Seb. The pace of the Estonian took him past his younger teammate Adrien and into second overall. The gap between them just 1.7 seconds.
Next up came SS10 Artigas 1 – 22.73 km and Seb was fastest from Kalle and Thierry. Elfyn also set the same time as Thierry for fourth fastest. There was drama for Ott though as he suffered a puncture in the stage and sadly dropped from second overall to sixth. Those to benefit were Seb who now moved into third, Elfyn who was now up to fourth and Thierry who sat in fifth. Sadly, we lost Josh and Eoin before the stage started as their car lost all its oil following an impact to the front underside of the Puma.
Onto SS11 Cantera 1 – 13.74 km which saw Kalle set the pace from Seb and Adrien. Sadly, for the second stage in a row we saw the other Puma retire with the same problem as Josh’s car. Greg would join his teammate in retirement from Saturday’s action.
The short SS12 Autódromo 3 – 2.50 km was won by Seb from Takamoto and Adrien. Kalle continued to lead with a 16.7 second gap to Adrien and Seb now within half a second of his fellow countryman in his bid to take second overall.
After the service break came SS13 Carmen del Paraná 2 – 18.67 km and once again Seb was fastest from Kalle and Ott. There was a change in positions as Adrien dropped to third with Seb moving into second overall. Also, on the move up the leaderboard was Ott who passed his teammate Thierry for fifth place whilst also closing a little on Elfyn who was in fourth overall.
Onto the penultimate stage then of the day, SS14 Artigas 2 – 22.73 km and Seb was fastest from Adrien and Elfyn. Unfortunately, Kalle had a tyre failure on the front of his car early in the stage and he dropped a huge amount of time falling to sixth overall. His teammate Seb moved into the lead with Adrien and Elfyn also moving up into second and third overall.
The final stage then of the day, SS15 Cantera 2 – 13.74 km and Kalle showed that he’d not lost any of his pace, setting the fastest time from Ott and Seb. The Finn was over two minutes from the rally leader Seb and over a minute and a half from fifth placed Thierry.
Let’s take a look at the top positions and hear from the drivers.
Classification after Day Two
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Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT
Sébastien Ogier
“It was a pity to see what happened to Kalle; you never want to take the lead from a team-mate in that way. Most of us have had issues with tyres at some point this weekend and unfortunately Kalle’s was more costly. Since we had ours yesterday, we’ve pushed and maximised everything we can, and we can be happy with that. It’s nice that we’ve managed to come back to where we are now but it’s definitely not over. Tomorrow we have the longest loop of the weekend, with maybe some rain in the forecast, so many things can still happen.”
Elfyn Evans
“It’s not been the easiest day, but we did what we could. I’ve still been struggling to find a good feeling, especially when the stages are more technical. But we had a clean day and were able to stay out of trouble and gain a couple of places. Ott is pushing pretty hard and will be tough to keep behind us tomorrow, but we’ll give it a good shot. We’ll keep working tonight to try and find some extra speed and aim to maximise our points tomorrow.”
Kalle Rovanperä
“Obviously this was not what we were hoping for today. Things had been going OK; we made some changes with the car last night and the balance had been better than yesterday. We have seen this weekend that the puncture risk has been quite high, and for us it happened so early in the stage that we lost a lot of time. Looking back, we should have stopped to change it, but it wouldn’t have made a difference to our position now. It’s disappointing, but let’s see what the conditions are like tomorrow and what we can do to take back some points.”
Takamoto Katsuta
“Thank you to the team for fixing the car so that we could restart today. Running first on the road we had to do a lot of road cleaning, as we had expected with the different surface of today’s stages, so it was hard to know how much pace we had compared to the top drivers. Still, it was a good learning day. The surface here is very specific and difficult to judge so it’s important to learn about it. We tried many different things with the setup and learned some good things.”
Sami Pajari
“Today we didn’t really have anything to fight for in terms of position, but we still tried to do what we could. We were running second on the road for most of the day with some tricky conditions, so it was not so easy to compare the pace. But we tried to keep up some proper speed and have some good confidence, while also trying some things with the car, and we’ll aim to continue like that tomorrow.”
Hyundai Motorsport
Adrien Fourmaux
“I was quite happy with how we managed the afternoon. I was quite concerned in some places with the potential of punctures, so we lost some time, but it’s a compromise between pushing and risking your luck or just doing your best without that. We already had two punctures yesterday, and today we had some issues with the grip. The gap was ten seconds this morning and it’s still ten seconds tonight, so not much has changed for us. There are still long stages tomorrow, so for us it’s just about seeing how much we can push.”
10 Round , Rally Del Paraguay
28 – 31 August 2025
Photographer: Dufour Fabien
Worldwide copyright: Hyundai Motorsport GmbH
Ott Tänak
“Our afternoon was all clean, obviously in the middle stage we dropped out a bit and we couldn’t commit as much in the second loop because of the risk of punctures. Our performance tomorrow will depend on what the weather is like, but if it’s dry then the road will continue to improve, and if it’s wet then we have no idea what’s going to happen. We need to balance the risks we take on the stages as best we can, and that’s all we can do.”
Thierry Neuville
“Our overall performance wasn’t the best, but considering we ended up cleaning the road for a lot of the day I think we can be happy with the outcome. Everyone had some setbacks today, but there are still some big gaps in the stage times. We got closer to the podium this afternoon, but there are still plenty of challenges awaiting us tomorrow – particularly with the potential change in weather. We’re only 10.2 seconds away from the podium, so we’re going to try and make the most of that on Sunday.”
Oliver Solberg
“Perfect,” smiled Oliver. “There’s not much more to say! We knew it wouldn’t be easy to make this time back – it’s never so easy on such fast roads. Fortunately for us there were some more twisty sections with more corners, and these were the places where me and Elliott worked really hard and pushed to make the time back.
“It’s been an amazing day. I’ve loved driving the Toyota today, it’s been so much fun and, once again, a massive thanks to all the fans who have been coming out and cheering for us today. Every time we get out of the car, we are surrounded by people wanting pictures and autographs – you know the Solberg family, we are all about the passion and the people for this sport. It’s a real pleasure to be here in Paraguay.”
Sunday
The final day of this first visit of the championship to Paraguay will see the crews tackle 79km over four stages. There are rumours that there will be rain coming and it all depends on when that arrives as to whether it affects the stages when they are run.
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