Sébastien Ogier is just one stage away from a record-equalling ninth World Rally Championship title, as he vaulted from sixth to third at Rally Saudi Arabia.
Thierry Neuville leads the event by 54.7s from Adrien Fourmaux, with Ogier 1m10.9s off the front.
Mãrtiņš Sesks led the rally at the start of the final day, but Neuville overhauled him on Saturday’s opener to establish a 2.0s advantage. But everything turned on its head on an insane SS16 Asfan.
Sesks stopped to change two punctures and therefore dropped from second to ninth, arriving to the stop control with a sick-sounding car, Takamoto Katsuta went wide and rolled in soft sand to fall to fifth, and most importantly Kalle Rovanperä dropped behind both Ogier and Elfyn Evans after stopping to change a wheel.
On his last WRC event, Rovanperä clearly wasn’t about to play the PR game: “What a f***ing s*** show,” he said.
The net result was Ogier, who was on a committed push to try and outscore Evans in their fight for the title, flew up to third overall – three positions ahead of Evans.
As it stands, Ogier is set to outscore Evans by seven points, giving him five points in hand heading onto the powerstage.
Elsewhere, Fourmaux was frustrated to have lost time in the dust behind cars who’d had punctures.
The Hyundai driver was given a one-minute time penalty at Friday’s final time control, but the team is investigating the issue with rally organizers.
Fourmaux told DirtFish at the start of Saturday he wants to stay under a minute behind the leader, and immediately at the end of SS16 he asked: “What is the gap to the lead?”
Informed it was 1m29.9s, he paused: “I was in the dust with cars of punctures in front, probably 10km I have to slow down completely. We need to see how much we lose because it’s not fair, it’s not fair.”
Rally organizers later adjusted his time from 16m23.3s to 15m48.0s, crucially putting him less than a minute off the lead again.
As for Neuville, he was sure he was going too slow. But in fact, he is in prime position to win his first rally of the season at the last attempt.
“Incredible, incredible,” he said. “I was saying to Martijn ‘I’m too careful, I’m too careful’ and he was like ‘no, no, no, no stay like this’. I really felt like losing time but at the end the approach wasn’t too bad.”
