Sébastien Loeb’s domination of Friday on the Monte Carlo Rally has continued into the afternoon as Sébastien Ogier took some time back from Toyota team-mate Elfyn Evans.
Loeb began the test with a 10.6-second lead after a storming drive on the morning’s final stage where Ogier seemed to struggle, and the M-Sport driver’s rhythm continued on the repeat pass.
He was 2.9s faster than Ogier, who did steal one second back from Evans to trail second place by just 1.4s.
“I’m feeling really well in the car so I know that I’m on the limit,” said runaway leader Loeb.
“It was the perfect stage I think. At the moment everything is going well so we try to continue like that.”
Evans had to contend with a small piece of bodywork flapping around his hood and briefly told co-driver Scott Martin “you’re a bit ahead of me” on the pacenotes, but he was nonetheless happy with his run.
Tänak nicked 0.5s from his ex-Hyundai colleague Breen who in turn took 0.7s from Neuville, meaning all three are covered by 6.9s on the leaderboard.
“It was definitely more enjoyable,” said Neuville who called his Hyundai ‘scary’ to drive in the morning.
“Now it was a little bit better because I know the road but the balance is not great, we had a lot of understeer especially in the faster sections.”
Gus Greensmith remains in contention to join this Hyundai and M-Sport battle too, as he had been heading the pack before dropping back to seventh on the final stage of the morning due to losing hybrid power aboard his Puma Rally1 Hybrid.
The M-Sport driver responded in perfect fashion with the fourth fastest time to start the afternoon with, just two seconds slower than Ogier’s Toyota. It means he is now 5.4s back from Tänak.
“The feeling is still really, really good so we’ll have a bit of a fight,” declared Greensmith.
Kalle Rovanperä’s pace was more impressive than it had been on the first pass of the stages as he got the better of both Takamoto Katsuta and Oliver Solberg to keep the latter of the two behind him in 10th.
“We did small changes in the regroup but yeah of course it’s much easier on the second pass when you know the road a bit better and when you’re not confident with the car you can manage a bit better,” Rovanperä said.
“I can’t do much more than that at this point.”
Katsuta, who is 34.2s ahead of his Toyota colleague, mysteriously said: “[The] time is better but we have no grip at the end of the stage because of some mistakes before the stage ourselves, but everything’s fine.”
It’s unclear what the ‘mistakes’ he referred to were.
SS6 times
1 Sébastien Loeb/Isabelle Galmiche (M-Sport Ford) 9m57.2s
2 Sébastien Ogier/Benjamin Veillas (Toyota) +2.9s
3 Elfyn Evans/Scott Martin (Toyota) +3.9s
4 Gus Greensmith/Jonas Andersson (M-Sport Ford) +4.9s
5 Ott Tänak/Martin Järveoja (Hyundai) +7.7s
6 Craig Breen/Paul Nagle (M-Sport Ford) +8.2s
7 Thierry Neuville/Martijn Wydaeghe (Hyundai) +8.9s
8 Kalle Rovanperä/Jonne Halttunen (Toyota) +10.0s
Leading positions after SS6
1 Loeb/Galmiche (M-Sport Ford) 1h04m38.1s
2 Evans/Martin (Toyota) +14.5s
3 Ogier/Veillas (Toyota) +15.9s
4 Neuville/Wydaeghe (Hyundai) +49.1s
5 Breen/Nagle (M-Sport Ford) +54.2s
6 Tänak/Järveoja (Hyundai) +56.0s
7 Greensmith/Andersson (M-Sport Ford) +1m01.4s
8 Takamoto Katsuta/Aaron Johnston (Toyota) +1m34.6s
9 Rovanperä/Halttunen (Toyota) +2m08.8s
10 Oliver Solberg/Elliott Edmondson (Hyundai) +2m13.6s
