Stage winner Thierry Neuville’s late check-in to Alfaro boosted Hyundai World Rally Championship team-mate Ott Tänak’s chances of climbing further up the podium on Rally México.
Neuville can no longer bag a good result for himself, but could still influence the outcome of the rally after dropping down the start order and slotting in between Elfyn Evans and Tänak. This gives Tänak an even cleaner line than Evans, with one car now between them on the road.
Hyundai said this was the result of a technical issue for Neuville on the road section before Alfaro, but it paid dividends as Tänak both whittled his deficit to second place Teemu Suninen and extended his advantage over fourth-place driver Evans by 5.3s, as Suninen and Evans set identical stage times.
It means the world champion is now 6.7s clear of Evans behind, with a 13.4s barrier to erode if he wants to overhaul M-Sport’s Suninen.
Sébastien Ogier continues to lead the rally and extended his lead further to 27.6s. Targeting a sixth win in México, Ogier was third-fastest; 0.6s slower than Tänak and 3.5s short of Neuville’s stage-winning benchmark.
Gus Greensmith has lost his sixth after runnning into strife with an engine-related issue on Alfaro.
Greensmith and co-driver Elliott Edmondson looked concerned by something just before they took to the stage and sure enough, a minute and a half later, the Fiesta WRC cut out and would not restart.
The M-Sport driver let the car roll down the hill and down an access road as he and Edmondson looked to resolve the issue. The pair did get going again, but only after losing over 10 minutes.
Kalle Rovanperä lost further ground on SS14 after slipping away from the Tänak and Evans on the previous test, and surrendered 12.1s ahead to Evans in fourth to occupy an increasingly lonely fifth place.
The gap between the two Toyotas stands at 12.1s and that is only likely to swell with Rovanperä now second on the road behind Greensmith, who did take the start of the following stage.
Greensmith’s woe also means that the top 10 leaderboard now has as many R5 cars in it as World Rally Cars. Pontus Tidemend continues to lead the charge at the head of WRC 2 in his Škoda from Nikolay Gryazin.
WRC 3 leader Marco Bulacia is now eighth ahead of Ole Christian Veiby, who is now back inside the top 10 following his brake troubles on Friday, and Emilio Fernández.
Leading positions after SS14
1 Ogier (Toyota)
2 Suninen (M-Sport Ford) +27.6s
3 Tänak (Hyundai) +41s
4 Evans (Toyota) +47.7s
5 Rovanperä (Toyota) +1m9.6s
6 Tidemand (Škoda) +6m21.4s
7 Gryazin (Hyundai) +7m12.5s
8 Bulacia (Citroën) +8m41.4s
9 Veiby (Hyundai) +11m33.3s
10 Fernández (Škoda) +11m46.6s
