Evans retires from Rally Poland

M-Sport's Elfyn Evans has retired from day two of Rally Poland due to a suspected water pump failure.

Evans had to park his Ford Fiesta RS WRC on the liaison section to SS11, the second test of the leg. The Welshman had been running eleventh overall, 22.5s off Mads Ostberg and a place in the top-ten. It has yet to be confirmed if he will be able to re-start on Sunday under Rally 2.

"Unfortunately we've had to retire on the road section after SS10," Evans said via social media. "The team will investigate when we get back to service. Should be OK for Rally 2 tomorrow."

Meanwhile, speaking at the end of Friday's action, Evans said the tyre decision on the repeat loop - he took five soft compound tyres - had cost him.

"I think it's fair to say that we made a fairly major mistake when selecting tyres for Friday afternoon. Half way through the long one [SS7] we already knew that was the case and the tyres had started to go off," he explained.

"Then I got slightly caught out in a braking point and with so little grip had a big overshoot into a field. There was no grip in the last 10 kilometres and we really lost a lot of time. When we saw the condition of the tyres we knew there was nothing we could do. We just had to get back to service with four tyres on the car.

"Having said that I think there were improvements this morning for sure. There's still some work to be done until I can really say that I'm where I want to be, but we'll start afresh on Saturday and see what we can do."