Adrien Fourmaux takes over WRC Rally Portugal lead

8th May 2026 0 By ApexMotorsports.co.uk

Hyundai’s Adrien Fourmaux has taken over the lead of Rally de Portugal as Toyota’s Sami Pajari dominated the morning’s stages.

Feature image credit: Jaanus Ree // Red Bull Content Pool

Three stages lined up the action on Monday morning, with an early start of 7:35am (local) at the Mortágua stage. The road was once again opened up by the championship leader, Toyota’s Elfyn Evans, as he had done on Thursday afternoon.

Toyota’s Oliver Solberg was the rally leader at the start of the morning, but as the Swede took a cross-pattern of hard and soft-compound tyres, he wasn’t able to match the best times set.

As such, he fell to ninth and fourth fastest on the opening two stages, respectively. He finished the morning loop down in fifth, 9.9 seconds off Fourmaux’s pace.

On the other hand, Hyundai’s leading man, Fourmaux, was able to overtake Solberg and climbed to the top of the timing boards with a 7.7-second advantage over Pajari.

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Toyota’s Finnish driver, Pajari, put in a strong performance on Friday morning as the 24-year-old took stage wins in the opening two stages of the day, but fell 2.9 seconds adrift of Thierry Neuville’s (Hyundai) best time on the final test of the morning.

However, it was not all smooth-sailing for the top runners, as Hyundai’s Dani Sordo went off the road on the Arganil test (SS5). He was able to return to the circuit but lost 10 seconds in the off-road excursion.

The Spaniard had voiced his frustration on SS4, after he finished 11 seconds off the leading time, after the crews had to pick their starting tyres on Thursday evening, after completing SS3.

“The guys who make the rules to put the tyres the day before is completely mad. Honestly, this is something like this. We don’t have any explanation. I don’t know why.

“The guys from Formula 1, they don’t pick the tyres two days before.”

So, after three stages on Friday, here’s how the leaderboard stacks up for the WRC runners.