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| Sebastien with his 'ferret' |
At the final service of the day, Sebastien Ogier
reflected: “I am happy with the way we handled this long day today. It was a
good clean performance without any major mistakes. Surprisingly, the grip was
better on most of today’s stages than it was on Friday. For us, it was all
about maintaining a steady lead over our team-mate Jari-Matti, and we did that
perfectly. As such, we did not have to take too many risks and took a rather
cautious approach to the many new stages. A 20-second lead is, to a certain
degree, reassuring. However, we will have to stay wide awake if Jari-Matti
pushes hard again tomorrow. If not, you can be out before you know it – and I definitely
want to make it to the finish this time. That would be the perfect end to a
perfect season.”
For his part, Latvala commented: “Our goal for
today was to push hard again and put some pressure on Séb. Unfortunately the
morning’s stages did not go quite as we had hoped. On the one hand, I was
lacking a little bit of confidence to go flat out from the start and find a
good rhythm. Then we had also marked too many places as slippery when we did
the recce prior to the rally. As a result, I hesitated a little a few times
during the first loop. Things went better for us later on, and we won three
special stages. However, Séb and Julien were barely slower than us and able to
maintain their lead. We only have about another 50 kilometres of special stage
to go on Sunday. Barring something out of the ordinary, it will no longer be
possible to make up that much ground. Despite this, I will try to keep up both
my pace and the pressure.”
Still hanging on to third place in face of mounting pressure, Thierry
Neuville is going as hard as he can in the Ford: “I’ve always been
close to the fastest except on the long stage, so I can be really pleased with
my day.”
Mark Higgins still has issues with his Fiesta, but has
narrowed it down to the lamda sensor – he thinks! Further down the field, Molly
Taylor in the Citroen had a wee fright: “We
are very lucky. We had some problems on the recce and only did one run over
Dyfnant. We had a bad note on one corner and rolled over on a hairpin 3km from
the finish. We were so lucky to land on four wheels but we lost 20-30 seconds.
Everything seems ok and I just hope we can carry on.”
Leaderboard after 16 (of 22) stages:
1, S. Ogier,
2h 33m 47.6s
2, J. Latvala,
2h 34m 07.9s, +20.3
3, T. Neuville,
2h 35m 02.0s, +1:14.4
4, A. Mikkelsen,
2h 35ms 22.0s, +1:34.4
5, M. Østberg,
2h 35m 29.3s, +1:41.7
6, M. Prokop,
2h 40m 29.6s, +6:42.0
7, D. Sordo,
2h 41m 33.1s, +7:45.5
8, E. Evans,
(WRC2), 2h 43m 07.1s, +9:19.5
9, J. Ketomaa,
(WRC2), 2h 44m 06.9s, +10:19.3
10 M. Higgins, (WRC2), 2h 44m 42.6s, +10:55.0
12, T. Cave,
(WRC2), 2h 49m 54.8s, +16:07.2
20, M. Taylor,
3h 01m 44.2s, +27:56.6
22, R. Barrable,
(WRC2), 3h 04m 10.3s, +30:22.7
24, T.
Jardine, 3h 08m 48.2s, +35:00.6
27, E.
Boland, 3h 11m 29.1s, +37:41.5
31, J. Ford,
3h 15m 09.1s, +37:33.9
33, O.
Pryce, 3h 16m 51.9s, +43:04.3
34, C.
Ingram, 3h 16m 56.3s, +43:08.7
36, D. McKenna,
3h 19m 29.6s, +45:42.0
37, K.
Cronin, (WRC3), 3h 21m 49.5s, +48:01.9
38, P. Morrow,
3h 22m 01.9s, +48:14.3
