TOYOTA GAZOO Racing World Rally Team continues to lead Rally Italia Sardegna at the end of a long and demanding Saturday, with Sébastien Ogier opening up his advantage over the competition.
Saturday was by far the longest day of the rally, with a total of 149 competitive kilometres to be driven without a mid-day service. One pair of stages would be run twice in the morning, followed by a tyre-fitting zone ahead of the afternoon loop, which would be the longest of the rally featuring two more stages to be driven twice.
After Friday afternoon’s opening leg of four stages, Ogier brought a lead of 4.5 seconds into the day, although a tyre off a rim in the morning’s first stage would eradicate that advantage. In a titanic battle with Ott Tänak (Hyundai), Ogier would reclaim the lead on the next test, and complete the morning just 3.5s adrift as he focused on getting through the rough and rocky second pass with his remaining four tyres.
In the afternoon Ogier was on fine form, winning three consecutive stages as he retook the lead and opened up an advantage of 17.1s.
Takamoto Katsuta moved up into third position overall at the end of the morning loop, but hopes of a podium finish were dashed by a transmission-related issue that, without a regular service, could not be resolved and forced him to stop in SS9. The team is investigating the issue and aiming to get Katsuta back into the rally under restart rules on Sunday.
Following a tough start to the event on Friday, Elfyn Evans drove a clean day on the demanding stages and was rewarded with fourth place at the end of Saturday, 30.5s from third. That puts him on course to secure a good points haul and close up in the championship after standings leader Thierry Neuville (Hyundai) did not reach the end of the day.
Drivers need to be at the finish on Sunday to clinch any points banked on Saturday evening, with up to 12 additional points available across the Super Sunday classification and the Power Stage.
Quotes:
Jari-Matti Latvala (Team Principal)
“To be leading at the end of another Saturday definitely gives us a great feeling. Seb has been driving superbly once again. Even with no spare tyres left, he was able to keep up his speed this morning and then attack in the afternoon. Taka was driving well and keeping Dani Sordo behind, so it was a pity that he had to stop with the transmission-related issue, but the last stage of the morning was very rough and it seems something had broken as a consequence. Elfyn hasn’t had the best feeling in this rally but he’s been driving consistently and, with Thierry making a mistake, he has moved into a better position and if everything goes well tomorrow, this can help him in the championship. It’s a relatively short final day tomorrow but I’m sure everybody will be pushing hard and we can expect more tense competition.”
Elfyn Evans (Driver car 33)
“It’s been a long and tough day out there. I think our speed has been better in certain stages than in others. When there’s a bit more room and the surface is sandier, it suits us better. When it’s tight and twisty we’re still struggling a bit. The good thing is that we got the car to the end of the day when others weren’t able to do so and that’s helped us move up the leaderboard. Of course, we still have tomorrow to get through to secure those points, and hopefully we can push to take a few more.”
Sébastien Ogier (Driver car 17)
“It’s been an incredible day overall. Very rough and very tough. The morning stages were not so fun to drive with some of the roughest conditions we’ve ever seen. That was really about surviving and I’m glad we were able to do that, especially after we lost one tyre after the first stage of the day. The afternoon was completely different: it was much more enjoyable to drive. The pleasure was back so I really enjoyed it and I managed to create a gap, so tonight it’s very positive. Tomorrow we still expect some rough conditions, but we will still need to have some speed and just carry on with the same approach.”
Takamoto Katsuta (Driver car 18)
“Everything was going quite well this morning. It was a very rough loop – the last stage especially was very extreme and tough for the cars. We managed to get up to third overall so we were in a good position. But I started to hear a noise in the last stage of the morning and we found that we had an issue with the transmission. With a normal service we could have fixed it, but with just the tyre-fitting zone we could not do so much. We tried, but it got worse on the first stage of the afternoon and we had to stop. It’s tough, but this is rallying and we just need to look forward.”
End of day two (Saturday):
1 Sébastien Ogier/Vincent Landais (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1 HYBRID) 2h39m43.2s
2 Ott Tänak/Martin Järveoja (Hyundai i20 N Rally1 HYBRID) +17.1s
3 Dani Sordo/Cándido Carrera (Hyundai i20 N Rally1 HYBRID) +2m12.8s
4 Elfyn Evans/Scott Martin (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1 HYBRID) +2m43.3s
5 Grégoire Munster/Louis Louka (Ford Puma Rally1 HYBRID) +5m28.8s
6 Sami Pajari/Enni Mälkönen (Toyota GR Yaris Rally2) +5m38.5s
7 Yohan Rossel/Benjamin Boulloud (Citroën C3 Rally2) +6m33.2s
8 Jan Solans/Rodrigo Sanjuan (Toyota GR Yaris Rally2) +6m45.2s
9 Kajetan Kajetanowicz/Maciej Szczepaniak (Škoda Fabia RS Rally2) +8m12.1s
10 Martin Prokop/Michal Ernst (Škoda Fabia RS Rally2) +8m22.1s
TBC Takamoto Katsuta/Aaron Johnston (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1 HYBRID)
(Results as of 19:00 on Saturday, for the latest results please visit www.wrc.com)
What's next?
On Sunday there’s a return to two stages along Sardinia’s northwest coast that were last run in 2022. The Cala Flumini and Sassari-Argentiera tests will both be run twice, the latter serving as the rally-ending Power Stage.
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