Dani Sordo maintains the lead of Rally Italy despite losing time to Sébastien Ogier and Thierry Neuville on the second run of the Monte Lerno stage.
In similar fashion to Friday, Saturday’s first two stages were repeated before a midday service break meaning the famous 13.72-mile Monte Lerno stage was repeated just two-and-a-half hours after the first pass.
Ogier won the test first time through and repeated the feat on the second pass, lightly extending his cushion over Neuville in third and taking a 5.2-second bite out of Sordo’s lead.
Sordo’s advantage is now 31.3s, but there were some conversations between him and co-driver Carlos Del Barrio inside the car as they approached the end of the stage.
“I was taking a little bit careful for the tires but otherwise OK,” Sordo said after getting out of his i20 Coupe WRC to inspect the condition of his rubber.
Neuville had gained 1.5s on his rival but immediately lost that plus another tenth on Monte Lerno, dropping 1.6s to trail by 2.9s in his Hyundai. However there is more on the table, as his decision to take an extra spare tire failed to pay off on SS8. Neuville put the new rubber on, but trouble struck towards the end of the stage.
“I punctured three kilometers towards the end with the front right, and I had to slow down the rhythm, I couldn’t carry the same speed,” Neuville revealed.
Photo: Toyota Gazoo Racing
Toyota’s Elfyn Evans lost more ground to title rivals Ogier and Neuville after feeling “quite a lot of movement in the car”, ceding 7.5s to Ogier in the 13.72-mile stage.
“We were trying to be clean and tidy so maybe not quite pushing hard enough,” the series leader added.
But he has made inroads on M-Sport’s Teemu Suninen, who has continued to fall away from the podium battle with a time 17.9s shy of the fastest. It means Evans is now just 2s behind the Finn, who was battling through a handbrake issue that manifested on the previous stage.
“How do you know?” Suninen asked when it was put to him if he was struggling without a working handbrake. “I was struggling quite a lot in the hairpins but there is reason for that. I’m just giving everything we can.”
Ott Tänak is now running second on the road following Kalle Rovanperä’s accident on the previous stage, but still made significant inroads on M-Sport’s Gus Greensmith’s sixth position. Threading his Hyundai through SS9 14.4s faster than Greensmith, Tänak has now closed to 9.2s behind in seventh.
“It’s been the cleaning effect and it’s not easy,” he said, explaining why he hasn’t been able to trouble the leaders on pace. “I had a clean stage, it’s all OK.”
Greensmith had a slight issue aboard his Ford Fiesta WRC though, with co-driver Elliott Edmondson warning his driver there was a low battery alarm meaning Greensmith chose not to stop and talk to the stage-end reporter.
He has 33.8s in hand over Pierre-Louis Loubet who was kicked out of seventh by Tänak on SS8 and lost more ground on SS9, but in truth he isn’t really in a battle with the reigning World Rally Champion given their comparative experience.
Takamoto Katsuta is still outside the top 10 after his Friday retirement but was quicker than Loubet, who “struggled a lot” with what he suspected might have been a broken damper.
The bottom two places in the overall top 10 are now filled by Rally2 cars, and its Hyundai pilot Jari Huttunen who has risen up to ninth due to the Škoda-driving Oliver Solberg losing a minute on SS9. He’s now outside of the points, having been as high as seventh, with Kajetan Kajetanowicz moving up to 10th place ahead of Solberg and Pontus Tidemand.
SS9 times
1 Ogier (Toyota) 12m29.6s
2 Neuville (Hyundai) +1.6s
3 Sordo (Hyundai) +5.2s
4 Tänak (Hyundai) +5.9s
5 Evans (Toyota) +7.5s
6 Suninen (M-Sport Ford) +17.9s
Leading positions after SS9
1 Sordo (Hyundai) 1h47m00.1s
2 Ogier (Toyota) +31.3s
3 Neuville (Hyundai) +34.2s
4 Suninen (M-Sport Ford) +51.6s
5 Evans (Toyota) +53.6s
6 Greensmith (M-Sport Ford) +2m05.5s
7 Tänak (Hyundai) +2m14.7s
8 Loubet (2C Competition Hyundai) +2m39.6s
9 Huttunen (Hyundai) +5m41.4s
10 Kajetanowicz (Škoda) +5m49.3s
