Tag: Rally Italy

Toyota’s Sebastien Ogier is closing in on a third straight FIA World Rally Championship win after distancing his nearest rival, Hyundai’s Ott Tanak, on Saturday’s grueling second leg of Rally Italy Sardinia.

The eight-time WRC champ (above), who’s running only a part-time schedule in 2024, will start Sunday’s final leg with a 17.1s advantage over Tanak after a turbulent day which included four lead changes and saw WRC points leader Thierry Neuville crash out.

Fortune initially favored Hyundai i20 N Rally1 driver Tanak when overnight leader Ogier’s decision to carry only one spare wheel for the morning tests backfired. A deflated tire on Ogier’s Toyota GR Yaris Rally1 forced him to use the same set of rubber for three increasingly rough and abrasive stages. After trading positions three times, the 40-year-old Frenchman trailed Estonian Tanak by 3.5s at the mid-leg tire fitting zone.

In the afternoon’s classic loop of stages around Monte Lerno, however, Ogier threw caution to the wind. With Tanak’s pace dropping away — the 2019 WRC title winner hinting that it was because he’d been instructed to play it safe — Ogier stormed back into the lead after just one stage and went on to post a trio of benchmark times.

A win on Sunday for Ogier would follow back-to-back victories on Croatian asphalt and Portuguese gravel, and could see him confirm his place as the most successful driver in Rally Italy Sardinia history.

“It has been a positive day, and an even more positive afternoon,” said Ogier after the day’s eighth and final stage. “This morning’s stages were very rough, but I enjoyed the afternoon so much more and it was a pleasure to drive the car.”

Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville arrived in Sardinia with a 24-point championship lead over Toyota Gazoo Racing’s Elfyn Evans, and looked set to increase that margin after climbing from fifth to third early in the day. But his podium hopes went awry when he misjudged a braking point in the final stage before the mid-leg regroup, sliding his i20 N Rally1 off the road, down a bank and into retirement.

Takamoto Katsuta was elevated to the final podium spot as a result, but the Japanese rising star’s time inside the top three was short lived. His GR Yaris Rally1 developed a transmission issue which proved terminal on the afternoon’s first test.

The drama up front opened the door for Dani Sordo to complete the leading trio in the third of the factory Hyundais. Still struggling to find his rhythm in only his second WRC start of the season, the Spanish part-timer trailed teammate Tanak by almost two minutes, with Evans a further 30.5s behind.

Thanks to the attrition among the leading cars, M-Sport Ford’s Gregoire Munster rounded out the top five in his Puma Rally1, albeit more than five minutes off the lead pace.

In WRC2, the second tier of international rallying, Toyota GR Yaris Rally2 driver Sami Pajari continues to put on a masterclass in sixth place overall. The 22-year-old Finn expanded his lead to 54.7s over Yohan Rossel’s Citroen C3, with Jan Solans in another GR Yaris maintaining his impressive form in third.

Such was Pajari’s pace that he was battling Munster’s Ford Puma Rally1 for a top-five place on the overnight leaderboard, before easing slightly on the day’s final stage to sit just 9.7s behind the Luxembourg driver.

Sunday’s short, sharp final leg is centered northwest of Alghero and includes two loops of two stages for a total of just 24.42 competitive miles. It ends with the bonus points-paying Wolf Power Stage — the 4.41-mile Sasseri-Argentiera 2 test, which finishes amid spectacular views of the Mediterranean Sea.

WRC Rally Italy Sardinia, positions after Leg Two, SS12
1 Sebastien Ogier/Vincent Landais (Toyota GR Yaris Rally1) 2h39m43.2s
2 Ott Tanak/Martin Jarveoja (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) +17.1s
3 Dani Sordo/Candido Carrera (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) +2m12.8s
4 Elfyn Evans/Scott Martin (Toyota GR Yaris Rally1) +2m43.3s
5 Gregoire Munster/Louis Louka (Ford Puma Rally1) +5m28.8s
6 Sami Pajari/Enni Malkonen (Toyota GR Yaris Rally2 – WRC2 leader) +5m38.5s
7 Yohan Rossel/Benajmin Boulloud (Citroen C3 – WRC2) +6m33.2s
8 Jan Solans/Rodrigo Sanjuan (Toyota GR Yaris Rally2 – WRC2) +6m45.2s
9 Kajetan Kajetanowicz/Maciej Szczepaniak (Skoda Fabia RS – WRC2) +8m12.1s
10 Martin Prokop/Michal Ernst (Skoda Fabia RS – WRC2) +8m22.1s  

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Toyota’s Sebastien Ogier delivered a near-perfect performance to lead Hyundai’s Ott Tanak after Friday’s super-rough, incident-filled opening leg of WRC Rally Italy Sardinia.

Eight-time FIA World Rally Champion Ogier (above) is running a limited schedule in 2024, and despite winning two of his three starts so far, he sits only fifth in WRC points. Hence, he’d start day one of the season’s sixth round as fifth car on the road.  

The 40-year-old Frenchman capitalized on the increased traction offered by his later starting position to win two of the day’s four gravel special stages in his GR Yaris Rally1, ending the leg with a 4.5s advantage over i20 N driver Tanak.

Ogier’s only blot on the day was an overly cautious first run through the 8.24-mile Sedini-Castelsardo test, where he yielded 5.9s to Tanak while trying to conserve tires (to save weight, he’d opted to carry only one spare, instead of the allowed two). In the end, Pirelli’s hard compound rubber stood up to the test of the Mediterranean island’s high temperatures and rock-strewn roads.

“It’s good,” said Ogier after the final stage. “It’s been extremely rough and demanding for the tires and I am happy that we made it because it was challenging with only five tires.”

Tanak went fastest on the day’s second test, that first run through Sedini-Castelsardo, and despite losing hybrid boost on two occasions, second place overnight marks the Estonian’s strongest start to a rally so far this season.

His Hyundai teammate, Dani Sordo, completed the overnight podium a sizable 28.7s behind, only grabbing the position when M-Sport Ford Puma Rally1 driver Adrien Fourmaux suffered a tire delamination on the third stage. Fourmaux, who was fourth in WRC points prior to Rally Italy, later retired with an electrical issue.

While the overnight fourth went the way of Toyota’s Takamoto Katsuta, who noted that his GR Yaris felt quicker than the times he was posting, it was a testing afternoon for championship front-runners Thierry Neuville and Elfyn Evans, who held fifth and sixth respectively after starting in the worst possible road positions– first and second, where grip was at its lowest on the sandy gravel as the pair acted as unwitting road sweepers for the cars behind.

A leaking tire on his GR Yaris during the opening stage only compounded Evans’ frustrations, and the Welshman ended the day almost one minute adrift of the lead.

“That has definitely been the hardest day you could imagine to open the road in Sardinia,” bemoaned Hyundai driver Neuville, who headed Evans by 24 points in the WRC drivers’ standings before this round. “A tough day for us, but [we will] carry on…”

Gregoire Munster completed the still-running Rally1 crews, the M-Sport Ford driver trailing Evans by 11.9s in seventh overall.

In WRC2, the second tier of international rallying, Sami Pajari pushed hard from the get-go, charging to a lead of 18.3s alongside co-driver Enni Mälkönen.

The former Junior WRC champion bookended his day with the quickest times on the opening and closing of the day’s four stages as he targets a maiden victory aboard a Toyota GR Yaris Rally2.

The Finn’s biggest threat came in the form of Pierre Louis-Loubet, who’s making only his second start of the season in a Skoda Fabia RS. The Corsica native won the day’s second stage to briefly take the overall lead by 1.2s.

But Loubet’s time at the top of the WRC2 leaderboard was short-lived after he was caught in the dust of Emil Lindholm, who’d pulled over to change a wheel on his Hyundai i20 N Rally2 in the third stage. Loubet completed that test only ninth quickest as a result and is awaiting a notional time to redress some of his loss.

Pajari moved back into the lead, completing the penultimate test just 0.6s down on stage winner Georg Linnamae’s GR Yaris before going 3.5s quicker than Loubet on the day’s final test.

Saturday is Rally Italy’s longest leg, with eight special stages adding up to 92.58 competitive miles and no opportunity for midday service. The morning features double runs of Tempio Pausania and Tula, while the afternoon includes four tests in the Monte Lerno area, including the breathtaking Micky’s Jump on the 15.74-mile Monte Lerno stage.    

WRC Rally Italy Sardinia, positions after Leg One, SS4
1 Sebastien Ogier/Vincent Landais (Toyota GR Yaris Rally1) 53m43.1s
2 Ott Tanak/Martin Jarveoja (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) +4.5s
3 Dani Sordo/Candido Carrera (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) +33.2s
4 Takamoto Katsuta/Aaron Johnston (Toyota GR Yaris Rally1) +34.5s
5 Thierry Neuville/Martijn Wydaeghe (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) +36.6s
6 Elfyn Evans/Scott Martin (Toyota GR Yaris Rally1) +57.3s
7 Gregoire Munster/Louis Louka (Ford Puma Rally1) +1m09.2s
8 Sami Pajari/Enni Malkonen (Toyota GR Yaris Rally2 – WRC2 leader) +1m34.6s
9 Pierre-Louis Loubet/Loris Pascaud (Skoda Fabia RS – WRC2) +1m52.9s
10 Jan Solans/Rodrigo Sanjuan (Toyota GR Yaris Rally2 – WRC2) +2m03.2s

Check out WRC.com, the official home of the FIA World Rally Championship. And for the ultimate WRC experience, sign up for a Rally.TV subscription to watch all stages of every rally live and on demand, whenever and wherever.