Sébastien Ogier has taken the lead of Rally del Paraguay after a puncture for Kalle Rovanperä on Saturday’s penultimate stage dropped the Finn to sixth.
Aside from a brief stint where Adrien Fourmaux led, Rovanperä has headed the pack for the majority of the Paraguayan event – staying out of trouble while others experienced issues.
He started the 14th of 19 stages 14.4s ahead of Ogier, who’s been on a continual fightback from a SS2 puncture, but it all fell apart on Artigas 2.
Ogier had already declared the fight for the win “was never off” at the end of SS14, but little did he know he was about to be gifted the lead by his team-mate’s trouble.
Rovanperä collected a front-right puncture early on the stage, and electing not to stop and change the wheel meant he gave up over two and a half minutes to plummet down the leaderboard – being caught by Yohan Rossel by the end of the stage.
“No idea [what happened], puncture from somewhere,” Rovanperä said. “Obviously we should have changed the tire, Jonne [Halttunen, co-driver] was saying we should go to the end, I didn’t know how long to the end so clearly wrong decision this time.”
WRC2 leader Nikolay Gryazin also punctured, meaning Robert Virves has taken the lead of that category.
