Saturday’s stage at the Rally Italia Sardegna proved to be a long runway that brought Sébastien Ogier ever closer to his fifth success in Sardinia and the 61st of his career in the WRC.
The Toyota Gazoo Racing driver, after exchanging first position with Ott Tanak twice in a row during the morning, took the reins of the race and never let go, concluding the stage with a 17.1 lead over the Estonian.
Speaking of Tanak, Ott saw his wings clipped by the team – even if the pace that Ogier kept during the afternoon seemed difficult to match, let alone beat – after the withdrawal of Thierry Neuville, who arrived on SS8 while he was comfortably third and without any need to force.
Instead, the Belgian lost concentration in a transition from a left-hand corner to a right-hand corner that was very close to each other and went off the road, getting stuck. At that point Hyundai preferred not to take any risks and secure the double podium it has in hand with Tanak second and Dani Sordo third.
The Spaniard, after Neuville’s retirement, seemed to have no chance of climbing into the Top 3, but a transmission failure on Takamoto Katsuta’s Toyota GR Yaris Rally1 promoted him to third. The same goes for Elfyn Evans, fourth but far from being a competitive driver this weekend. For this he is grateful for the World Championship leader’s mistake, which paves the way for an unexpected recovery of points.
Gregoire Munster completes the Top 5, doing well not to make any mistakes and finishing fifth after overtaking at the last minute… the first Rally2 in the ranking, that of WRC leader Sami Pajari.
The Finn is by far the dominator of the cadet series with an amazing day, which led him to finish sixth overall and first in class. Behind him, Yohan Rossel took second place with the first Citroen C3 Rally2 ahead of the second Toyota GR Yaris Rally2, that of the Spaniard Jan Solans.
The Rally Italia Sardegna will resume tomorrow morning with SS13, the 12.55 kilometer Cala Flumini 1. The first car will enter the special at 08:00.
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