Sébastien Ogier has trimmed his deficit to second-placed Thierry Neuville to 1.4 seconds and closed to within 27s of Rally Italy leader Dani Sordo with a fastest time on SS11.
The crews returned to Sedini – Castelsardo for the second time this weekend, with the first pass occuring the day before the second pass, rather than earlier on the same day.
Sordo was only good for the fourth quickest time on the test, “not really happy with the balance” of his Hyundai that was shod with four medium compound tires. But he added: “Thierry was with the same tires and he was faster so we can’t complain.”
The battle to watch continued to be Ogier and Neuville’s match over second spot, and intriguingly they took opposing tire choices. While Neuville banked on four medium compound Michelins, Ogier went for three mediums and one hard.
On the evidence of Sedini – Castelsardo at least, Ogier’s may have been the stronger choice as he outpaced Neuville by 1.6s, despite the six-time world champion being slower in the majority of the splits.
Neuville explained: “I got a bit too much wheelspin on the uphill. I was maybe a little bit managing too much the tires. We have a different tire strategy, I have no idea which one is going to be the best.”
Elfyn Evans felt he was too cautious with his tires on Saturday morning after burning through his rubber in Turkey. But he didn’t appear to be much faster in the afternoon either, dropping another 8.3s to team-mate Ogier to trail by 27.9s.
Photo: Toyota Gazoo Racing
“No, obviously not,” he replied when asked if he was happy with his time. “We had a pretty good run it seemed but grip was quite low in places, quite polished so quite surprised.”
But perhaps the bigger problem is the pressure coming from behind, as former rally leader Teemu Suninen whittled the gap between the pair down to just 3.9s by going 2s quicker.
Suninen, whose handbrake is now back in fully working order, quipped: “It was good. There’s still five to go.”
Takamoto Katsuta suffered a scare when approach a left-hand hairpin, discovering he had a brake issue. Adopting co-driver Dan Barritt’s advice of “OK, take it carefully then”, he crawled through to record a time some 57.9s shy of Ott Tänak who was behind him on the road.
Tänak is in a distant sixth following the retirements of Gus Greensmith and Kalle Rovanperä on Saturday morning, with Pierre-Louis Loubet 1m01.8s behind him and points leader Evans 1m20.7s ahead. But Tänak did set a strong pace on SS11, powering to the third quickest time despite starting second on the road.
Photo: Jaanus Ree / Red Bull Content Pool
Oliver Solberg jumped up two spots from 10th to eighth overall and into the lead of WRC3 with a time that was 2.7s quicker than Loubet’s Rally1-spec Hyundai.
Solberg’s rise was at the expense of Jari Huttunen, who is now 4.9s behind the WRC3 leadeer, while Kajetan Kajetanowicz is another 6.6s off Huttunen and completes the overall top 10.
SS11 times
1 Ogier (Toyota) 12m46.9s
2 Evans (Toyota) +2.6s
3 Neuville (Hyundai) +3.6s
4 Sordo (Hyundai) +5.0s
5 Suninen (M-Sport) +10.2s
6 Tänak (Hyundai) +13.9s
Leading positions after SS11
1 Sordo (Hyundai) 2h06m31.1s
2 Neuville (Hyundai) +27s
3 Ogier (Toyota) +28.4s
4 Evans (Toyota) +56.3s
5 Suninen (M-Sport Ford) +1m00.2s
6 Tänak (Hyundai) +2m17.0s
7 Loubet (2C Competition Hyundai) +3m18.8s
8 Solberg (Škoda) +6m35.2s
9 Huttunen (Hyundai) +6m37.4s
10 Kajetanowicz (Škoda) +6m44.0s
