Toyota could consider team orders to help Elfyn Evans’ World Rally Championship bid in Rally Finland after the title contender suffered an “unusual” mechanical issue, according to Jari-Matti Latvala.
Evans was firmly in the fight for victory, sitting in second behind team-mate Kalle Rovanpera, when the Welshman’s GR Yaris suffered a driveshaft failure on Stage 12 [Paijala, 20.19km].
The technical fault pitched Evans into a spin, which he recovered from, but he then had to limp through the test and the following Ouninpohja stage. This dropped him from second to eighth overall, over six minutes off the lead held by Kalle Rovanpera.
Evans had been on course to pick up 15 provisional Saturday points, which would have cut championship leader Thierry Neuville’s advantage by five points, with the Hyundai driver in a distant fourth.
Now Evans is behind team-mate and Rally1 rookie Sami Pajari and top WRC2 runners Oliver Solberg and Toyota team boss Latvala, enjoying a one-off outing this weekend in the secondary class.
Latvala was surprised by Evans’ technical issue, admitting that it was “unusual” and damaging for his title aspirations. Given the situation, he has suggested that Toyota may consider tactics to help Evans recover to fifth ahead of Pajari in the afternoon.
Should Toyota opt for such a rare strategic move, the call will be made by sporting director Kaj Lindstrom, standing in for Latvala this weekend.
“It’s very, very bad luck and when it is a technical thing like that, it is not what you want especially with the championship going on,” Latvala told Autosport.
“With this situation, people have asked 'are we thinking about team tactics because Sami is ahead of Elfyn?' This is something you could consider.
“When a technical thing that has played a role, you might consider that we have one driver doing only one event, then maybe you have to little think about the championship as well. Luckily, it is not my decision this weekend - that is with Kaj.
“It's an unusual [failure]. I don’t think we have ever had a driveshaft problem.
“But of course there is always a little bit of risk in motorsport that some parts, when you machine them, that something has gone wrong and that is why it has failed.”
The driveshaft failure is the latest piece of bad luck to strike Evans this season, after costly punctures in Kenya, Portugal and Sardinia, but the two-time Finland winner remains focused on trying to salvage as many points as possible from the weekend.
“There's nothing you can do. There's no point in crying about it, you just have to get on with it,” Evans told Autosport.
“I was coming into a junction, I was back to the throttle, and it was clear we lost drive to one of the wheels.
“Obviously it spun us around immediately and from there on it was a case of just nursing the car back.
“Basically, we still have to go this afternoon because there's some points to catch back against the WRC2 guys.”
Evans’ title rival Neuville has moved into third overall, but has been fighting his Hyundai i20 N all through the morning, revealing that he was afraid all through Ouninpohja [stage 13] due to inconsistent handling.
“I don’t know,” Neuville replied when asked by Autosport about his car struggles.
“We haven’t found a solution. We have tried more or less everything.
“We are going to do a few more steps this afternoon, with different springs but the performance isn’t there, and maybe the Toyota has improved a bit.
“But generally I feel like we could be faster if we had a bit more consistency in the grip changes.”
