Sébastien Ogier crashed out of Central European Rally, blowing the World Rally Championship title battle wide open.
Ogier started CER two points ahead of Toyota team-mate Elfyn Evans and led the event for all of Thursday and Friday’s stages.
However he was overhauled by Kalle Rovanperä on Saturday’s opener, meaning Ogier and co-driver Vincent Landais started SS10 0.7 seconds off the lead.
At the penultimate split Ogier had been 0.4s ahead of Rovanperä, but understeering through a fifth-gear right-hander, the eight-time world champion hit a tree in a 10G impact and ripped the wheel off his Toyota GR Yaris Rally1.
Both he and Landais are OK, but their crash dumped them out of second place and presents both Evans and Rovanperä with a massive championship opportunity.
Speaking to DirtFish at the scene of the accident, Ogier revealed a front-left puncture was the root cause of the incident.
Ogier told DirtFish: “Unfortuantely we picked up a puncture on the front-left and unfortunately in the same time the TPMS wasn’t working, so we didn’t get the info on my dash. This corner was really fast, I came into it and the car went absolutely straight – I couldn’t turn. So nothing I could have done.”
Asked where he could have picked up a puncture, Ogier added: “I couldn’t feel anything in any corners, but a couple of hundred meters before there was a big jump so maybe the compression of the landing [caused it], but we have already a lot of jumps so it shouldn’t happen in this case. So I don’t know, and we won’t really know I guess because no information from the sensor.
“Hopefully the car is fixable [for tomorrow]. Of course it’s frustrating in this moment.”
Rovanperä – who currently trails Ogier by 21 points – now leads the rally ahead of Evans and Ott Tänak.
