WRC | Rally Portugal, SS8: Neuville and Ogier without hybrid

Today’s afternoon lap of the Rally Portugal begins to offer the first suffering on the part of the cars, which from SS2 to SS8 (and then to SS9) were forced not to be taken care of by their respective teams due to missing the mid-day service.

On SS7 it was the Toyota GR Yaris Rally1 of Elfyn Evans and Scott Martin that suffered damage from a tire that went off the rim. On SS8, the 18.72 kilometer Arganil 2, the number 11 Hyundai i20 N Rally1 and the number 17 Toyota GR Yaris Rally1 had problems. That is, the cars of Thierry Neuville and Sébastien Ogier.

Both had to take note of the same hitch, namely the malfunction of the hybrid package supplied by Compact Dynamics which forced the two French speakers to do without the surplus thrust guaranteed by the electric motor placed just before the rear axle of their respective cars.

Ogier took the fourth time, 2.5 seconds from the reference time set by event leader Kalle Rovanpera, but was able to take advantage of a very good starting position, which partly masked the absence of the hybrid which occurred halfway through the test .

However, things went much worse for the World Championship leader, who found himself without a hybrid from the start of the test. In the end Neuville limited the damage by losing 6″6, but it is very precious time in view of tomorrow, when he will be able to start the special stages from a better position than today.

Returning to Ogier, the inconvenience to the hybrid allowed Ott Tanak to oust him from third position in the general classification, causing him to slip to fourth place and breaking the provisional hat-trick that Toyota had managed to build thanks to Rovanpera, Katsuta and precisely in 8th times iridescent.

The fight for the top of the event is more open than ever, with Rovanpera and Katsuta divided between them by a clear second with just one special stage remaining at the end of today’s stage.

Yet another change of leadership in WRC2, with Oliver Solberg regaining the top spot by doing better than teammate Gus Greensmith. However, the Norwegian and the British find themselves separated by only one tenth. Yohan Rossel doesn’t give up, finding himself 1″9 from second place and 2 seconds from first in his category.

WRC 2024 – Rally Portugal – Ranking after SS8