By Ian Gordon

Elfyn Evans is set for a Sunday showdown with World Rally Championship rival Thierry Neuville after a ding-dong battle on Rally Croatia on Saturday.

The Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT driver ended the day trailing the Belgian – who has a six point advantage in the standings – by just 4.9 seconds.

The duo had started the day locked on the same time after Friday’s stages before Neuville gradually built up a lead on the opening four stages in his Hyundai.

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Evans grabbed the lead on SS13 by two seconds before his rival hit back on the next stage to regain the advantage, increasing it on the final two stages of an enthralling day.

Eight-time world champion Sébastien Ogier made it two GR Yaris cars inside the top three, ending within 11.6sec of the top spot in his Toyota.

Evans said: It’s been good fun, it’s been a good day, good driving.

“Couldn’t quite follow Thierry, it didn’t quite work out. Just keep driving, hopefully make some good tyre decisions and try our best.

“We had a good start to the afternoon to take the lead – we had the right tyre choice for that stage especially.

“After that, I think it’s hard to say what the best choice was, as the feeling was pretty good in the car. We just unfortunately fell short at the end of the day.

“There will be another difficult tyre choice to make to cover the whole final day but we’ll try to make good decisions and give it our best.”

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Under the new scoring system, Neuville’s Saturday standing will earn him 18 points, providing he completes Super Sunday. Evans will receive 15 while Ogier gets 13.

“It’s not a big lead, but we had a great day,” said Neville. “Despite a not perfect tyre choice this afternoon we were capable of defending our lead.

“We need to continue attacking and have a good tyre choice. It wasn’t easy when the weather wasn’t very easy to judge.”