World Rally Championship: Elfyn Evans second in Rally Sweden to cut Thierry Neuville's lead

Elfyn Evans finished second at Rally Sweden, 29 seconds behind winner Esapekka Lappi of Finland.

Toyota's Evans, 35, is second after two rounds of the World Rally Championship (WRC), three points behind Thierry Neuville who was fourth in Sweden.

The Welshman took maximum Super Sunday classification points but missed the full five Powerstage bonus by less than 0.1s to team-mate Kalle Rovanpera.

"I lost it all on the last couple of corners in the arena," said Evans.

"Anyway, I guess we can be happy with this result, come the start of this weekend and especially what happened on Friday.

"Overall we can be relatively happy but still areas to work on."

The difficult wintery conditions saw potential winners Rovanpera and Hyundai's Ott Tanak both retire after stage four incidents, while another of Evans' GR Yaris Rally1 team-mates Takamoto Katsuta crashed out while in second place later on Saturday.

Evans himself lost time after brushing a snowbank and ingesting snow which forced him to finish stage 11 on lower power.

Lying third at the end of Saturday the Welsh driver collected 13 points from the first three days of competition under the revised scoring system introduced in the WRC this season.

Evans had targeted the maximum seven points as the best performer on Sunday and duly delivered.

He won one of the final day's three stages, finishing runner-up to Rovanpera on the other two, and was only denied on the final run by another snowbank collision.

For Hyundai driver Lappi it was only his second WRC rally victory, coming more than six years after his last. At 2,394 days it is the longest gap between podium appearances.

"Crazy slow, but it's worth it," said Lappi.

"I've been hunting for this second victory for quite a while. I have to say a big thanks to Cyril [Abiteboul, Hyundai team principal] - he kept me in the team after a very bad second half last year. It's quite a contrast from then until now."

The drivers face a complete change in conditions for round three of the 13-race series, with Safari Rally Kenya from 28-31 March.

1. Thierry Neuville (Belgium) Hyundai, 48 points

2. Elfyn Evans (Great Britain) Toyota, 45 points

3. Adrien Fourmaux (France) Ford, 29 points

4. Sebastien Ogier (France) Toyota, 24 points

5. Ott Tanak (Estonia) Hyundai, 21 points