Sunday morning: Drama on the stages

There was plenty of drama over the first loop of two stages on the final day of the 2013 Vodafone Rally de Portugal. Problems on the first stage of the day for both Volkswagen Motorsport cars, of Sebastien Ogier and Jari-Matti Latvala caused an early scare and had differing effects by the end of the second stage.

Latvala completed the first stage with a transmission problem that he initially thought was a broken driveshaft. However, between the two stages, he diagnosed a front differential problem and was forced to complete the second of the two stages with just rear wheel-drive. He had lost second position to Citroen Total Abu Dhabi WRT’s Mikko Hirvonen on the first stage but managed to retain third overall as he went through the first of the day’s two runs of the 52Km Almodovar stage.

Ogier on the other hand, appeared to have rectified his problems, suggesting it was a slipping clutch that caused him to lose time early in the first stage. He regained his pace for the second part of that stage and appeared to have no recurrence on the Almodovar test. He went through second-fastest to Qatar M-Sport WRT driver Mads Ostberg but crucially, faster than Hirvonen to stretch his overall lead to 49.3s.

The following positions remained largely static, with Evgeny Novikov holding fourth and Nasser Al-Attiyah fifth with Andreas Mikkelsen sixth.

In WRC2, Esapekka Lappi drove a considered morning to maintain his class lead, arriving at the end of the second stage with an advantage of almost 10 minutes. This was due, in part, to problems for second-placed Sepp Weigand, who got stuck on a concrete bridge early in the stage, then had gearbox problems for the rest of the stage. He dropped nine minutes to Lappi but crucially, fell behind Robert Barrable, to third in class.

In WRC3, Frenchman Bryan Bouffier kept his overnight lead and arrives at the penultimate service of the rally with an advantage of almost ten minutes over Sebastien Chardonnay.