Elfyn Evans leads Rally Japan for the TOYOTA GAZOO Racing World Rally Team at the end of the first day of true mountain stages on Friday, with team-mate Kalle Rovanperä rounding out a closely-fought top three.

Following Thursday night’s short first stage in Kuragaike Park, the crews faced demanding, twisting and technical roads in the mountains to the north-east of the service park in Toyota City.

Friday’s opening stage Isegami’s Tunnel was the longest of the rally at 23.29 kilometres and provided some early drama, which Rovanperä avoided to set the best time and take the rally lead.

Evans was then fastest in the Shitara Town test by an impressive 4.3 seconds to share the rally lead with Thierry Neuville returning to Toyota Stadium for mid-day service.

In the afternoon, Evans was quickest again in a shortened second pass of Isegami’s Tunnel, before Rovanperä ensured a clean sweep of stage wins for the GR YARIS Rally1 HYBRID with the best time in Inabu Dam. There, Evans was only 0.3s slower as he opened up his lead to 3s over Neuville, and Rovanperä is only 2.1s further back.

There are three Toyota drivers inside the top five with Takamoto Katsuta fifth in his first ever home round of the WRC. After setting some strong times he is still within 20.6s of the lead in his TGR WRT Next Generation entry.

Sébastien Ogier led after SS1 but was among those to encounter trouble in SS2, having to stop to change a wheel and tyre and dropping over two minutes, ending the day in 10th overall.

Evans said: “It’s always nice to be leading at the end of the day but there’s still a long way to go, so it doesn’t mean too much just yet.

“The morning’s first stage was very demanding and a proper wake-up call.

“We lost a bit of time in there but then we had a good run through the second stage that we did, and we’ve followed that up with a decent afternoon as well

“ It’s still been pretty difficult, very twisty and very technical, and the grip levels have been changing all the time.

“The character changes within stages so we need a car that works well in many different scenarios.

“Again there will be a bit of everything tomorrow but we’ll give it our best as always.”