At the Rallye Monte-Carlo, as we know, everything can change even just in one special stage, but it's always difficult to get used to a situation like this. This morning we experienced such a stage thanks to Thierry Neuville, the best interpreter of all of the conditions found on PS9, the 18.79 kilometer Esparron / Oze 1, in which he literally made the difference.
The Belgian from Hyundai Motorsport won the first special on Saturday by flying on the verglas and on the slippery parts of the first 3 sectors of the stage, inflicting heavy gaps on everyone. Only Elfyn Evans managed to keep his delay under 10 seconds, but by just 4 tenths.
This means several things for both Neuville and the race itself. The Belgian, thanks to the contemporary fifth time of SéBastien Ogier, 18″8 behind him, returned to second place in the general classification behind Evans, but also reopened a race that seemed to have ended for him after the spin on SS4 in yesterday morning.
Neuville now has a delay of 6 and a half seconds from Evans, but also a 7″2 advantage over Ogier, who certainly won't give up despite a really subpar performance for his high standards on the Monte and, in general, even in your career.
Evans, as mentioned, was good at limiting the damage, perhaps also driven by the fact that he did not want to be overtaken by Ogier already in the first test of the day. Last night the Frenchman had moved to just over 4 seconds behind him with a final special stage as a master of Monte-Carlo, but this morning he was too cautious and he admitted it himself once he reached the end of the test.
Among the great difficulties that even the best had to overcome in this test, Gregoire Munster signed an excellent special stage and the third fastest time overall. The Dutchman felt good on that type of surface, doing more than 13 seconds better than teammate Adrien Forumaux.
This time and a mistake made by Andreas Mikkelsen during the first half of the test led Munster to rise to sixth place in the general classification with a 4″3 advantage over the Norwegian of Hyundai Motorsport. In this regard, Mikkelsen seems to have started again with the Alzenau team right where he left off, i.e. the great difficulties in adapting to the car.
The splendid fight in WRC2 between Nikolay Gryazin and Pepe Lopez continues. The Spaniard achieved the best time in his class on SS9, but only by a few tenths over the Russian who is racing with a Bulgarian license this weekend. Thus Gryazin, official Citroen Racing driver from this year, remained in the lead with a margin of just 1″1. Yohan Rossel was slightly behind the first two in the second Citroen C3 Rally2, now 12″7 behind his teammate . Oliver Solberg was further behind, climbing to fourth place with the Skoda Fabia RS Rally2 of the TokSport Skoda team.
#WRC #Rallye #MonteCarlo #SS9 #Neuville #reopens
