Ott Tänak maintained his lead on Rally Italy with a third stage win from four tests on Saturday morning, cementing a 30.9s second lead over Craig Breen.
After Esapekka Lappi’s retirement on the first Saturday stage, it’s the second place battle that has been the most fiercely contested.
Dani Sordo hit back after a slow run on the preceding Tempio Pausania test, setting the second-fastest time on Erula-Tula. But his gains were minimal, as Craig Breen was only 0.2s behind.
That run wasn’t without difficulty – the driver’s side hood pin wasn’t correctly fastened on Sordo’s Hyundai, leading to the hood raising and flapping in his line of sight multiple times.
“Sometimes I lost a little bit of time because it was in the middle of my view,” he said, though that time loss was likely minimal given he was only 0.8s off stage winner and rally leader Tänak’s pace.
Pierre-Louis Loubet has lost touch with the podium battle a little after Erula-Tula, going only sixth fastest and 8.3s off the pace. He must find 14 seconds to depose Dani Sordo of third and make it a double-podium for M-Sport.
Adrien Fourmaux in the third Ford Puma has slowly edged closer to Loubet and is now the closest he’s been to the top four, now 17.7s behind his team-mate.
Takamoto Katsuta has closed the gap on fellow Toyota driver Kalle Rovanperä in sixth place to 5.5s, as the championship leader suffered a half-spin and needed to reverse.
It was another symptom of Rovanperä’s continued struggle to coax the Yaris into doing his bidding on the most technical sections of stages.
“In slow places, I cannot get the car to turn and then when it does turn, it’s big oversteer,” Rovanperä explained.
SS13 Results
- Ott Tänak/Martin Järveoja (Hyundai) 11m26.2s
- Dani Sordo/Cándido Carrera (Hyundai) +0.8s
- Craig Breen/Paul Nagle (M-Sport Ford) +1.1s
- Takamoto Katsuta/Aaron Johnston (Toyota) +6.6s
- Adrien Fourmaux/Alexandre Coria (M-Sport Ford) +7.5s
- Pierre-Louis Loubet/Vincent Landais (M-Sport Ford) +8.3s
- Elfyn Evans/Scott Martin (Toyota) +9.6s
- Kalle Rovanperä/Jonne Halttunen (Toyota) +16.3s
- Gus Greensmith/Jonas Andersson (M-Sport Ford) +16.4s
- Nikolay Gryazin/ Konstantin Aleksandrov (Škoda) +25.5s
Leading positions after SS13
- Ott Tänak/Martin Järveoja (Hyundai) 1h53m36.1s
- Craig Breen/Paul Nagle (M-Sport Ford) +30.9s
- Dani Sordo/Cándido Carrera (Hyundai) +41.2s
- Pierre-Louis Loubet/Vincent Landais (M-Sport Ford) +55.2s
- Adrien Fourmaux/Alexandre Coria (M-Sport Ford) +1m12.9s
- Kalle Rovanperä/Jonne Halttunen (Toyota) +2m04.2s
- Takamoto Katsuta/Aaron Johnston (Toyota) +2m09.7s
- Gus Greensmith/Jonas Andersson (M-Sport Ford) +4m01.1s
- Nikolay Gryazin/ Konstantin Aleksandrov (Škoda) +4m29.8s
- Jan Solans /Rodrigo Sanjuan (Citroën) +4m56.9s
