SS11 – Neuville climbs and Tanak responds

It was M-Sport’s Ott Tanak who fought back on the second, all-new stage of the morning. Having lost a handful of seconds to Ogier on the first stage of the day, Tanak responded by going through fastest, taking more than five seconds back from Ogier, who is now 6.3 seconds behind. 

The big winner on the stage though was Thierry Neuville, who was third-fastest but crucially, faster than both Dani Sordo and Craig Breen to vault Sordo into third place overall, 12.6 seconds behind Ogier. However, he was still slower than the Frenchman on the stage so did not close any further on second. 

M-Sport’s Elfyn Evans suffered a puncture in the stage and lost a lot of time, causing Craig Breen, behind on the road, to worry about the smell of rubber from Evans’ shredded tyre. Jari-Matti Latvala was also still complaining of feeling ill, losing time as well in the stage. 

In WRC2, Teemu Suninen was the fastest, from Pontus Tidemund and Andreas Mikkelsen in third, who admitted to taking things easy on the new stage. It was a difficult one for Pierre-Louis Loubet though, who hit a cow in the road at the start of the stage and carried on with damage, holding Eric Camilli up in the process.