ELFYN Evans is in third place after the opening stage of Rally Japan,

TOYOTA Gazoo Racing World Rally Team’s Sébastien Ogier set the fastest time in the first FIA World Rally Championship stage to be held in Japan for 12 years as the team kick-started its home event on Thursday evening.

The first action at the all-new Rally Japan began in this morning’s shakedown, held along the same roads that would host the evening’s opening stage – but in the reverse direction. With testing not permitted outside of Europe, this was an important opportunity for the teams and drivers to work on car setup ahead of the weekend’s stages.

After doing four runs over the shakedown, Elfyn Evans set the equal-fastest time in his GR YARIS Rally1 HYBRID, with team-mates Ogier and Kalle Rovanperä in third and sixth respectively.

Following a fantastic reception at the ceremonial start inside the Toyota Stadium – which also hosts the service park for the rally – the drivers took on the 2.75-kilometre Kuragaike Park stage in darkness.

The stage times were close and Ogier together with new co-driver Vincent Landais claimed the stage win by just 0.1 seconds. This year’s world champion Rovanperä was only 0.6s slower in fifth, one place ahead of Evans. Starting his home round of the WRC for the first time, Takamoto Katsuta was one place further back in seventh in his TGR WRT Next Generation entry.

Evans said: “This first stage tonight was quite a challenging start to the event.

“OK, we had driven it in shakedown but now it was reversed so we couldn’t just follow the same lines.

“Shakedown was the first chance to drive the car here in Japan so we tried a few different things through the morning and had a good feeling at the end

“ It’s difficult with long-haul rallies like this as we don’t get a chance to test in representative conditions, so we have to guess the setup a little bit and just try to evolve that during the weekend.”