Winner of last weekend’s Fafe RallySprint, Citroen Total Abu Dhabi Rally Team’s Dani Sordo, went through the qualifying stage for this year’s Vodafone Rally de Portugal fastest this morning and in doing so, gets to select his road position for the first leg of the event first. The Spaniard posted a time of 3:01.6 through the stage in his Citroen DS3 WRC, taking the first win of the event.
Second fastest was Volkswagen Motorsport driver and championship leader Sebastien Ogier, still fighting the illness that ruled him out of last weekend’s precursor event, who was 0.7s slower than Sordo. Third-fastest was VW team-mate Jari-Matti Latvala, just 0.1s behind Ogier while fourth-fastest was free practice pace-setter Mads Ostberg in the first of the Qatar M-Sport World Rally Team Fiesta WRCs, also 0.1s further back.
Finn Mikko Hirvonen was fifth in the second Citroen, a further 0.4s adrift with Evgeny Novikov rounding out the top six, in the second Fiesta, 0.3s further back.
The crews now return to the service park at the Algarve Stadium to choose their road position for the first day, at 13.00hrs local time.