Rally - Ogier leads

Ogier

At close of play on Day 2 in Poland double world champion Sebastien Ogier’s lead over youngster Andreas Mikkelsen currently stands at 5.6 seconds. The pace of the rally remains phenomenally high. So far, the average speed is 120.84 km/h. Compare that to the fastest rally in the history of the World Rally Championship which was in Finland in 2012, with an average speed of 122.9 kilometres per hour.  

Jari-Matti Latvala is currently fourth this time for third place just 1.5 seconds behind M-Sport's Ott Tanak. 

Rally leader Sébastien Ogier said: "On the opening stage I benefitted from the lack of dust, which made visibility difficult for the drivers behind me. I was absolutely flat-out on every kilometre, without making a single mistake. The stages are awesome fun to drive. It is so incredibly fast that it even takes your own breath away in the cockpit. Our lead over Andreas is wafer-thin. It is about as close as it was in Sweden.”

Mikkelsen

Andreas Mikkelsen added: "We got the absolute maximum out of today. It was all-out attack. This morning we lost a little time on Sebastien, partly because we made small mistakes. However, we then made up ground again in the afternoon. My tyre selection was not the worst. We packed four hard tyres and one soft in the boot for the second run, and used the soft tyre on the closing spectator stage. In contrast, Seb was predominantly on softs. Just over five seconds with the final 30-kilometre sprint still to come is not much.”

Off-form by his standards Jari-Matti Latvala said: “I was just lacking the right balance today. Sometimes I pushed too hard, others not hard enough. Although the car ran flawlessly, unfortunately I could not find my rhythm. The times I was setting in the morning just could not match those of the afternoon. As such, I was unable to hold Tanak at bay. I will try to rectify that on the final two special stages."