The first full day of action then would see the crews tackle six stages. However there had already been two stages run on Thursday afternoon and this gave a leaderboard and Seb was holding the lead from Kalle and Adrien. Now Elfyn was given a five second penalty after colliding with a hay bale in a chicane. The Welshman was holding eighth place and 11 seconds from the leader. With 99km’s to run who would hold the lead at the end of the first full day?
First up was SS3 Granit und Wald 1 – 10.86 km and Thierry was fastest from Ott and Adrien. The Belgian’s pace took them up three positions to fourth overall. The top three overall was Seb, Kalle 2.7 seconds and second overall whilst Adrien was third.
Into the middle morning stage then, SS4 Böhmerwald 1 – 15.27 km and Kalle set the pace from Sami and Takamoto. Thierry could only manage the sixth best time and fell behind his Estonia teammates to fifth overall. This was an interesting stage as the first and second cars into the stage, that’s Seb and Elfyn could only manage the seventh and eighth fastest times. Kalle was finding some speed though and feeling comfortable and was now just six tenths of a second from Seb.
The stages were getting longer and next up was SS5 Col de Jan 1 – 23.37 km and this was a stage which Seb felt confident in as he flew through beating Kalle by 3.3 seconds and Elfyn by 12.9 seconds. Normally this would be quite bad but there was more drama for Thierry, and he had a small off giving him damage to the front right-hand side, then a puncture and damage to his steering after hitting a bank. There was even more drama for Greg as he landed heavily after a jump on a section of bank next to the road breaking suspension on the right-hand side and suffering punctures as well.
After the service break came SS6 Col de Jan 2 – 23.37 km and with the stages run in the opposite way from the morning this certainly changed things. Kalle was fastest from Seb and Elfyn. The Finnish driver closed the gap on Seb now just 2.4 seconds behind whilst Elfyn was falling away from them both, the gap sadly growing to his teammates. The top three overall positions were held by Seb, Kalle and Ott although Elfyn was now just half a second behind the Hyundai driver.
Next up was SS7 Böhmerwald 2 – 15.27 km and Kalle set the pace from Adrien and Takamoto. Elfyn was fifth fastest, whilst Ott was only eighth and was passed by Elfyn who moved into third overall. Kalle’s pace took him really close to his teammate, now just three tenths behind Seb. Further back Josh held ninth overall and was just out there learning the stages and getting experience for the future.
Onto the final stage of the day then, SS8 Granit und Wald 2 – 10.86 km and Elfyn found some pace albeit not a huge amount, going fastest by 1.1 seconds from Seb and Kalle. Still, it was a confidence boosting stage win. The gap between the top two was six tenths of a second.
Let’s take a look at the top ten and hear from the drivers.
Classification after Friday
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Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT
Sébastien Ogier
“I’ve enjoyed today and this exciting fight with Kalle. We fought the whole day to try and stay in the lead and even though it’s a very small gap, it’s very positive to still be in the lead. Today I don’t think we always had the usual advantage being first on the road on asphalt because it’s been dry and quite dusty, so I think conditions have been more or less fair for everyone which is what we like to see. Tomorrow will not be any easier, and if it rains it can be even more challenging, but we will keep fighting.”
Kalle Rovanperä
“It has been an enjoyable day driving some really nice stages and being in a big fight through the whole day. Starting third on the road I think we have managed the situation well so far, to be this close to Seb, so I’m pretty happy with the day. We had some good stages and some good times and it’s a tight battle. Tomorrow we have the challenge of being further back in the starting order and seeing how conditions evolve, but I’m sure it will stay really close, and we will keep fighting.”
Elfyn Evans
“I think we had some strong moments during the day but overall, it didn’t go as well as we would have hoped – especially on Col de Jan, where we lost a bit of time to Seb and Kalle. On the first pass I was a bit tentative at the start and then had a little overshoot and didn’t get as close as I would have liked on the second pass either. I seemed to be losing more today in the dirtier sections, so we need to look at that tonight and see why that was. It’s good to get up to third but it’s still very tight and we need to keep pushing.”
Takamoto Katsuta
“It’s been a very challenging day as we expected, especially stages five and six which had a lot more dirt on the road. But we managed to get through with some quite OK stage times. I think we probably lost some time because of our road position, which was not ideal, but we are only six seconds away from the podium, so we will keep pushing. It’s not been a bad day, and we will try to be even better tomorrow.”
Sami Pajari
“It has been a mixed day in terms of the stages and also for our performance. We had some really good stage times but also some stages where I feel we were a bit too far away from the pace. Of course, I would like to do better but we still need to go step by step and we will try to find something to be more consistent tomorrow. The road position should improve which can help us, but let’s see how the conditions are.”
Hyundai Motorsport
Ott Tänak
“Today definitely had some very demanding stages, and we didn’t have enough speed. It’s not so much to do with the setup, but more performance we are missing. We all want to be competitive, so it can be frustrating to just survive, but we did everything we could and tried our best.”
Round 12, Central European Rally
16 – 19 of October 2025
Photographer: Austral
Worldwide copyright: Hyundai Motorsport GmbH
Adrien Fourmaux
“When we’re flowing on the flat roads, we are on the pace, but as soon as we get to a bumpy, dirty stage we really struggle. We need to analyse why this is happening and why we are slower in these conditions – that’s our target for now. We are missing really good testing in these conditions, so I’m not really surprised, but that’s a part of motorsport.”
Thierry Neuville
“Today was challenging. We made a small mistake this morning when we went over the jump with the wrong line and got some damage and a puncture. We started working on the car, but there still isn’t much improvement, despite the hard work from everybody. We tried a couple of things and we’re going to continue trying, it’s the only thing we can do at the moment, and we know we have some work left.”
Oliver Solberg
“It’s been a good day today – it’s really nice to be getting back into driving on asphalt again. The stages in Germany and Austria were quite clean and giving pretty good grip, but the road in Czech Republic was really different. We knew from the recce this would be a tricky one with the grip level changing a lot – and it was exactly like this: a real test. But it was a lot of fun, I enjoyed it.
“I was learning more all of the time with the car. We made some changes to the set-up, but, really, every stage today was different. We’re going to talk to the team tonight and think about what we want to do with the car for tomorrow – but a lot of the set-up is depending on what the weather does. We’ll see if we get some rain, that could make tomorrow even more interesting.”
Saturday
The second full day of action will see the crews tackle 103km’s over six stages which are in Germany and Czech Republic. Can the reversed top ten help Elfyn and Scott to close the gap to their teammates?
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