The Toyota Gazoo ✅Racing driver’s benchmark time wꦦas set on his third – and final – run through the short ‘Hakmark’ test, and was just a tenth of a second quicker than the I20 N Rally1 car of new Hyundai Motorsport signing, Esapekka Lappi.

Rovanpera – the winner of last year’s winter event – will run first on the road on Friday by virtue of the fact he is currently second in the points standings, and Rallye Monte-Carlo winner Sebastien Ogier is sitting out the event as part of his car-share prog꧋ramme.

His replacemen♉t – Takamoto Katsut𓆉a – went third quickest on his ‘works’ debut for the Japanese manufacturer, three tenths slower than the 2m 50.9sec time clocked by his Finnish team-mate.

A fourth go 🀅was needed before Elfyn Evans finally found his groove having initially struggled to improve upon hi🤡s initial three attempts alongside Scott Martin. The Welshman admitted it was “quite narrow and tricky” and that made it difficult to “find a rhythm”.

Despite initially experi😼encing issues wiཧth the energy recovery system on his Hyundai supermini, Irishman Craig Breen ended the exercise fifth on the time sheets once a cure had been found by clocking in with a 2m 52.2s effort.

A below-par Thierry Neuville was content with sixth given the ༒week he has just had in the build-up to round two. “I have been sick all week and I am not feeling so good, but hopefully we will be able to manage,” said the Belgian, who was forced to miss his pre-event test beca☂use of the flu.

“The snowban𒀰ks are really hard. It🔯'’ quite fast in there and it’s a tricky shakedown but we had a clean run through.”

The first of the points-scoring M-Sport Ford Pumas was Ott Tanak in seventh – 2.4 seconds clear of eighth-placed team-mate Pierre-Louis Loubet who has already made it clear that progress and not points is the priority💃 in the days ahead.

In WRC2, meanwhile, Oliver Solberg set the pace aboard his Mons🐓ter Energy-backed Skoda Fabia RS Rally2 car. He pipped the Volkswagen Polo GTI R5 of WRC returnee Ole Christian Veiby by 0.3 seconds.