Rally Italia Sardegna: Day 3 - Solberg seizes lead before decisive final day for TGR-WRT trio
Oliver Solberg has taken the lead of Rally Italia Sardegna to set up a final day championship decider with fellow TOYOTA GAZOO Racing World Rally Team drivers Elfyn Evans and Sami Pajari.
Saturday was the longest day of the rally with 123.66 competitive kilometres to be driven across two loops of three stages.
After a strong performance during the rally’s first full day on Friday, Solberg began the morning in third overall, just 12.3s from the lead. He gained one place already in the day’s opening stage when Adrien Fourmaux (Hyundai) was slowed by a loss of tyre pressure, then claimed a pair of stage wins to catch and pass Thierry Neuville (Hyundai) for the lead – a valuable position in his bid to close the 21-point deficit he had to Evans entering the final round.
Solberg started the afternoon with his lead at just 2.7s, but this grew to 36.6s after Neuville stopped with damage in the first stage of the loop. With team-mate Sébastien Ogier now up into second overall and taking two stage wins of his own during the afternoon, Solberg’s advantage at the top stands at 33.6s going into the final day.
With Neuville’s exit and Fourmaux stopping to change a wheel in SS12, Pajari and Evans benefitted to move up to third and fourth overall. Fourmaux did reclaim fourth overall in the day’s last stage, 6.4s ahead of Evans. Takamoto Katsuta has moved up to sixth overall after a trouble-free day.
Based on current overall positions, Evans remains in the lead of the virtual championship standings, six points ahead of Solberg and 12 ahead of Pajari with up to 10 additional bonus points available from the final day; five for the fastest drivers in the rally-ending Power Stage and five more for the quickest drivers across the day in the Super Sunday classification.
There is now a GR Yaris Rally2 1-2-3-4 in the WRC2 class with Roope Korhonen leading Gus Greensmith, Teemu Suninen and Kajetan Kajetanowicz.
Quotes:
Jari-Matti Latvala (Team Principal)
“It’s very exciting that the fight for the championship is going right down to the final day of the season between our drivers. With just one day to go, it’s now very close between Elfyn and Oliver. So far, Oliver has driven very well to get into the lead of the rally, which is where he really needs to be, and he needs to keep up that performance tomorrow as well and keep taking risks to go for the maximum Sunday points, as he has done many times this year. Elfyn has understandably been on the cautious side so far and has to raise his performance level tomorrow to score the points he needs to hold Oliver off. Sami has been driving consistently and that’s got him up into the podium places, but realistically will need something else to happen tomorrow to have a chance. It’s not all about our drivers because others will be pushing too, so it promises to be a real Super Sunday to end the season.”
Elfyn Evans (Driver car 33)
“We were in a tricky position today. The feeling was OK behind the wheel and we were driving cleanly, but the road was evolving and the grip improving a lot with every car, so with fast drivers starting behind us, it was difficult to try to close the gaps to them. The second pass was quite rough and perhaps we were a bit too conservative in the first two stages, but when Adrien got a puncture and dropped a few seconds behind us, we gave it everything in the last stage to try to keep him behind. One more position would have helped us for tomorrow, but with many cars between us, we didn’t stand much chance. Oliver has been driving very well and put himself in a strong position, but tomorrow is still a long day and we just need to go all in.”
Sébastien Ogier (Driver car 1)
“This has been a more positive day for us than yesterday. We managed to climb some positions and I enjoyed this afternoon, especially this first stage of the loop which has the nicest profile of the weekend and was not so rough, and it was good to win two stages. It feels like anything can still happen in this rally, as tomorrow is a long day with some rough sections to drive through. Oliver has done a great job so far and I would not want to wish bad luck on anyone, but it can happen to any of us, myself included, so we just have to keep trying until the end.”
Oliver Solberg (Driver car 99)
“I think this has been one of the toughest days but one of the best also. The feeling in the car has been really good and this morning was quite flat-out to try to get ourselves into the lead, which we were able to do. This afternoon I tried to be a bit more clever and look after the tyres, while a lot of things were happening around us on every stage. On one hand, those incidents for others gave us more of a lead, but they also benefitted our rivals for the championship. But we can’t control anyone else and we just have to keep doing the best we can. Tomorrow the objective is clear and the target will be the full 10 bonus points, as it has been on most Sundays this year.”
Takamoto Katsuta (Driver car 18)
“Today was quite OK for us and better than yesterday, with no problems. It wasn’t easy as we were second on the road, and then we had to open the road this afternoon, but I just tried to drive cleanly and as well as possible. We managed to gain some positions and now our road position should be better for tomorrow with a few cars in front of us. It’s going to be an exciting final day for all the fans to follow and we will just try to enjoy the last day driving this car.”
Sami Pajari (Driver car 5)
“We had high hopes that today could be stronger than yesterday but it seemed that the road order was unfortunately still playing quite a role and it just wasn’t really possible to be faster than the guys who were starting behind us. We haven’t been giving up and we’ve still been trying to do all that we can. We were anticipating that some drama could happen this afternoon, and that allowed us to gain a couple of positions. The situation is not in our hands but I don’t think that anybody will be cruising around tomorrow, so many things can still happen and we just need to keep pushing to the end.”
End of day three (Saturday):
1 Oliver Solberg/Elliott Edmondson (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) 2h42m33.2s
2 Sébastien Ogier/Vincent Landais (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +33.6s
3 Sami Pajari/Marko Salminen (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +1m39.9s
4 Adrien Fourmaux/Alexandre Coria (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) +2m32.0s
5 Elfyn Evans/Scott Martin (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +2m38.4s
6 Takamoto Katsuta/Aaron Johnston (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +5m43.9s
7 Jon Armstrong/Shane Byrne (Ford Puma Rally1) +6m01.2s
8 Roope Korhonen/Anssi Viinikka (Toyota GR Yaris Rally2) +8m23.0s
9 Gus Greensmith/Jonas Andersson (Toyota GR Yaris Rally2) +8m42.6s
10 Teemu Suninen/Janni Hussi (Toyota GR Yaris Rally2) +9m46.6s
(Results as of 20:00 on Saturday, for the latest results please visit www.wrc.com)
What's next?
The final day of the season consists of two returning stages in the north-west of the island each run twice. A final tyre-fitting zone will be held before the second pass of Sassari-Argentiera serves as the season-ending Power Stage.
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