To compare with adventures which were happening in top division of Rally Portugal, Friday was very quiet day for Trophy category.

Four changes of the leader of the rally: at beginning Hayden Paddon took the first position in interim rally classification, after that Jari-Matti Latvala climbed on the top, then – Kris Meeke, then – Ott Tänak. Unexpected retirement of Meeke on second part of the day. The roll-over crash of Latvala. Some electric problems on Paddon’s car. And Ogier’s step-by-step burst from bottom of top-10 to 3rd position. All of that is about Friday in WRC category.

During the day Valery Gorban and Sergey Larens were moving systematically away from Jean-Michel Raoux and Thomas Escartefigue and were trying to course Martin Prokop and Jan Tománek as close as possible. Herewith the crew of  Eurolamp World Rally Team outrode the French duo steadily. On the other hand rush for the Czechs was not easy but not unsuccessful.

If during morning section Prokop was 30-40 seconds quicker than Gorban on every of three special stages, in the afternoon Ukrainian was much closer on the same stages. On 26-kilometers SS5 (Viana do Castelo 2) Valery lost only 8 seconds to Martin, and on 18-kilometers SS6 (Caminha 2) was quicker in 18 seconds.

Unfortunately the clear competitive in speed on the rally roads was destroyed by embarrassing holdup on a one of road sections which brought arriving late to a time check point. As a result Eurolamp WRT’s crew got 3 minutes 10 seconds penalty. So, with account of the penalty, Valery Gorban and Sergey Larens were losing to  Martin Prokop and Jan Tománek 5 and half minutes after Friday’s part of Rally Portugal.

But there are another two days and nearly 200 kilometers of the rally distance. So the rally continues.