A decision by the stewards at the Rally Sweden, the second round of the World Rally Championship (WRC) 2022, resulted in a preliminary decision in the fight for victory. Shortly after midnight, the stewards imposed a ten-second time penalty on second-placed Elfyn Evans (Toyota).
As a result, the Welshman went into the final day 18.3 seconds down on his leading team-mate Kalle Rovanperä. However, that soon became irrelevant. Because on Sunday’s first special stage, Evans crashed into a bank of snow after spinning, damaging the front of his Toyota GR Yaris Rally1 and causing the bonnet to burst open. Evans was then unable to continue his journey.
Previously, Evans had been penalized because of his curious departure just before the finish line of the 15th special stage “Umea 2” on Saturday evening. The Toyota driver had lost control of his car in the last corner of the last special stage of the day and had driven over the fast wall that bounded the track.
Evans triggered the timing at the finish before he rammed into a mobile floodlight mast and then continued on the other side of the track in the direction of the finish control. The stewards saw this as a violation of Article 19.2 of the WRC Sporting Regulations, as Evans did not follow the route prescribed in the road book at this point.
In addition, Evans gained an advantage by entering the last corner too quickly, as the finish line was right at the exit of the corner. “Obviously we came in a bit too quickly and were more or less on the finish line when we hit the snow bank,” Evans explained in an interview with the English-language edition of ‘Motorsport.com’.
After Evans’ recent incident on Sunday morning, Rovanperä leads Rally Sweden after 16 of 19 special stages with a 23.9 second advantage over Thierry Neuville (Hyundai). Third is Esapekka Lappi (Toyota, +28.8 seconds). Fourth-placed Takamoto Katsuta (Toyota) is 1:51.5 behind and is no longer able to fight for the podium on his own.