Sébastien Ogier has assumed the lead of Central European Rally after Thierry Neuville went off the road twice on a single stage.
Schärdinger Innviertel proved to be the toughest test of the rally so far, with the majority of Rally1 drivers having at least one off-road moment, including Ogier.
But by far the most dramatic moments were delivered by the championship leader. Neuville’s first escapade was a brief one, dropping two wheels on the grass exiting a turn and spinning his i20 N Rally1 around and dropping a few seconds.
But his second off almost ended in disaster. Neuville overshot a corner and went into a field but there was a ditch between the field and the road, which his Hyundai got stuck in when trying to climb back onto the road. After an initial struggle his tires finally found some traction on the wet grass and pulled him out, though half a minute was lost.
“My pacenotes were too fast,” admitted Neuville. “It’s a wide road. In the dry maybe it would have worked but just my pace notes were already optimistic. The car never turned because it was slightly greasy so I decided to go into the field. But on the way out there was no way to get out, so we got stuck.”
Ogier now holds a 4.6s advantage over Ott Tänak, with the 2019 world champion now set to take five points out of Neuville’s championship lead as things stand.
Saturday's morning stages were more slippery than expected as fog rolled in and made the road surface greasier
Elfyn Evans is 8.3s off the lead in the final podium position, with Neuville 25.3s further adrift after his highly eventful run through Schärdinger Innviertel.
Takamoto Katsuta is half a minute behind Neuville in fifth place, having also gone off the road on SS11; in his case, he outbraked himself into a hairpin left and ended up on wet grass, sending him well off info a field that required an extremely slow-speed drift to return to the road. Sami Pajari in the fourth Toyota remains sixth.
A miserable CER for Adrien Fourmaux took another turn for the worse on Saturday morning. The front differential on his Ford Puma wasn’t working after leaving morning service, making it “undriveable.”
“We have a differential issue on the front, and so then the car doesn’t slow down as it should be,” Fourmaux told DirtFish. “And also it really locks up the wheels on the braking, but it also offset the lines, it doesn’t brake as it should, and it was really, really difficult to drive.
“Sometimes when it’s taking the grip, it seems okay, but as soon as you have one lock-up, it just completely upsets the car. A few times I was on the braking with a lot of understeer, so it was quite difficult to drive the car and we got trapped a few times.”
Fourmaux had pushed on anyway to try and remain competitive but couldn’t get the recalcitrant Puma to turn in, going off-road three times in two stages. The third of those offs was highly consequential, hitting a post and damaging the rear of his car.
He stopped for five minutes mid-SS10 to change the right-rear wheel and continued, but retired on the following road section – the radiator for the hybrid system had lost cooling due to broken pipes leaking liquid, so Fourmaux elected to stop and avoid damaging the hybrid unit further.
That promoted M-Sport team-mate Grégoire Munster to seventh though with a minute deficit to Pajari ahead, he is unlikely to make further progress up the leaderboard on pace alone.
Andreas Mikkelsen returned for Saturday’s after careering into a fence and retiring on Friday morning. He clipped an anti-cut marker on Granit und Wald, which spun him off into the grass. But with plenty of open fields on Saturday morning’s loop, not constrained by fences, he was able to continue without any lasting issues.
