World Rally Championship: Elfyn Evans maintains World title hopes with second place in Spain

Image source, EPA

Image caption, Elfyn Evans set the early pace in Spain before a slide in the gravel cost him time

Elfyn Evans retained hopes of a first World Rally Championship title with second place behind Belgian Thierry Neuville at Rally de Espana.

The Welsh driver trails Toyota team-mate Sebastien Ogier by 17 points with just one round left in 2021.

Ogier, fourth in Spain, will guarantee his eighth world title with third place or better in Monza next month.

"I'm pleased in one sense but quite frustrated in another," said Evans who finished 24.1 seconds behind Neuville.

"It wasn't a perfect weekend. Still a pretty solid job, but of course we are fighting a bit of a cause here.

"Not what we wanted, but there we go."

Evans, who won the previous rally in Finland, began the penultimate round as the only rival to Ogier.

He dominated the first morning, winning two of the opening three stages, but struggled with the set-up on his Yaris throughout Saturday, admitting he got it wrong.

"We took a bit of a gamble on the lunchtime service," he explained

"We managed to get an improvement to some areas of the car but unfortunately compromised other areas that were working quite OK before."

On Sunday Evans and co-driver Scott Martin were also unable to match the pace of the two Hyundais of leader Neuville and Dani Sordo.

The Spaniard won the final day's four stages to edge out Ogier for third place.

Evans, who is bidding to be the first Welsh driver to win the World Rally title, picked up 18 points plus three more for third place on the rain-soaked final powerstage, trimming seven points off his team-mate's pre-Spain championship lead.

The Frenchman collected only 12 points plus a bonus of two from finishing fourth on the final run.

"It's points for the championship," said Ogier.

"Coming here I was targeting higher, but for some reason it didn't happen.

"In a hard time, we still took what we needed for the championship."

The title will now be decided in Italy, from 19-21 November, just as it was in 2020.

On that occasion Ogier clinched his seventh world title, denying team-mate Evans with victory on the final stage.

Neuville remains third in the overall standings and his second victory of the 2021 World Rally Championship means the manufacturers title will also go down to the final round.

His Hyundai Shell Mobis World Rally team trail the Toyota Gazoo Racing team of Evans and Ogier by 47 points.