Oliver Solberg keeps Rally Chile lead after chaotic Saturday
Oliver Solberg, driving the Toyota GR Yaris, preserved his first‑place position in Rally Chile after a day of sharp fighting and a series of spectacular rollovers.\
He opened the morning with a 10.1‑second advantage over Elfyn Evans, but a series of tyre‑pressure adjustments and a slip in early steering edges tightened the gap to 7.2 seconds before the final stage.\
When Evans nearly took stage nine, the Ton Tobias‑racing drive, Solberg answered by pushing the closing section of the 28.31‑km route, pulling back a 2.9‑second cushion and restoring his lead to 10.1 seconds for the day.\
Stage battles and tyre strategy shape the top four
Parallel to Solberg’s duel with Evans, Sebastien Ogier and Adrien Fourmaux jostled for the podium. Ogier, after winning stages seven and eight, finished 9.3 seconds behind Solberg and 2.1 seconds off Evans’ time.\
Fourmaux, who opted for softer rubber, captured stage eight and dropped to third overall by conceding 10.7 seconds to Solberg in Maria las Cruces, yet still finished 18.1 seconds shy of the leader.\
In the change‑over, Sami Pajari’s performance slipped; he had to rely on the preceding three Rally World Cup rounds and finished five minutes behind Solberg, 40.4 seconds trailing Evans and 50.5 seconds behind the leader.\
Rollovers mar the midfield and force retirements
Thierry Neuville’s Hyundai i20 N Rally 1 rolled twice in stage seven after a high‑speed slip at 8.3 km point, ending his rally but leaving both driver and co‑driver unhurt.\
Martijn Wydaeghe, his co‑driver, hit a compression point that launched the car into a series of flips; the pair assessed potential Sunday restart before focusing on Sardinia.\
The rolling punishment also befell M‑Sport‑Ford’s Jon Armstrong, who went sideways on a bank during stage eight, damaged the front, and retired after a brief push to the finish.\
Other incidents and category reshuffles
Esapekka Lappi and Josh McErlean, both with M‑Sport, moved into sixth and seventh behind the retirees, the former clocking more than three minutes back.\
WRC 2 resident Nikolay Gryazin spun his Lancia in stage seven, igniting a brief fire that was promptly extinguished; the crew escaped safely.\
Following Robert Virves’s puncture in the same stage, Lancia’s Yohan Rossel stepped into the category lead, maintaining the position through the day.
With the top four within a twenty‑second spread, the next chapters of Rally Chile will test strategy, tyre management, and the drivers’ ability to recover from incidents that disrupted mid‑field campaigns.
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