A puncture for Adrien Fourmaux has dropped him out of the lead fight which is currently headed by Sébastien Ogier, while Ott Tänak suffered his own tire problem.
Ogier started Saturday with a 2.1-second advantage over Fourmaux and 7.3s over Tänak, and duly extended that rally lead to 7.4s (11.0s over Tänak) with a stage win to open the leg.
However SS8 Lerno – Su Filigosu altered the shape of the battle, as Fourmaux punctured and then later decided to stop and change it. That meant he lost almost three minutes, dropping him close to Ogier on the road.
The Toyota driver indeed began to be hampered by Fourmaux’s hanging dust until the Hyundai driver parked up to let his countryman past, but in total Ogier lost 29.7s to Tänak – and with it the rally lead.
Ogier declared at the end of SS8 that he expected to get time back, which he did while he was completing SS9.
Tänak then lost air from his tire for the final five kilometers of SS9, admitting he “tried to manage to not take [the tire] off the rim”. But that allowed Ogier to gnaw 10.5s out of Tänak on the stage.
Overall, Ogier therefore leads Tänak by 15.0s.
“This event with Adrien on the previous one was a bit disturbing,” Ogier admitted, “but we try to stay cool and drive well on this one.”
As for Fourmaux, his morning got even worse. After dropping to seventh with the puncture – caused by hitting something in the line – he first got off-line over a series of crests, then massively misjudged a junction and severely overshot.
The Hyundai driver lost another 55.1s on the stage.
“We have a lot of dust coming inside the cockpit and it did disturb me,” he explained. “So then I made a mistake. It’s a really difficult morning for us.”
Kalle Rovanperä has made up two positions over the course of Saturday morning, making lightwork of overhauling fellow Toyota-driving Finn Sami Pajari.
Pajari is a safe fourth overall – despite a wild moment on SS9 – ahead of championship leader Elfyn Evans who felt his final stage was “terrible”.
In WRC2, Emil Lindholm’s margin is now almost a minute after Yohan Rossel suffered a 5G impact on SS8 that knocked a tire off the rim.
“[I was] just too fast in a slow corner and I hit a tree,” Rossel explained. “I try to fight, now it’s over.”
A broken steering arm on the road section forced Rossel into retirement.
