Four stages made up the morning loop of Day Two of the WRC Rally Australia, and with the factory Citroën threat out of the picture this weekend, Ford’s Jari-Matti Latvala and Mikko Hirvonen went about extending their cushion over the rest of the chasing field.
At the end of the morning loop, Latvala enjoyed a 17.2sec lead over his Hirvonen after he recording a quartet of scratch times to overtake his teammate for the lead after a 7.0sec deficit at the start of the day.
The loose gravel surface saw Hirvonen’s overall pace hamstrung as he swept the lines clean, but it the Ford Abu Dhabi World Rally Team crews were unchallenged for the lead.
In the only remaining points-scoring Citroën DS3 WRC in the field, privateer Petter Solberg/Chris Patterson were in a secure third place overall, but suffered from a lack of grip and therefore appeared slower than his rivals. In fact, Solberg was having to oversteer his car to get it to perform as he wanted, but for “Hollywood” and his fans this made for spectacular action.
Henning Solberg (M-Sport Stobart Ford World Rally Team) remain in fourth place overall, and have extended his lead over teammate Matthew Wilson after the Briton spun on SS11. Khalid Al Qassimi (Ford Abu Dhabi World Rally Team) survived a scare on the morning’s opening test, but retained his sixth place.
Evgeniy Novikov (M-Sport Stobart Ford World Rally Team) restarted Day Two under SupeRally regulations and set about posting impressive stage times to close the gap to his rivals on the leader board. Meanwhile, the two factory Citroën drivers Sebastien Loeb and Sebastien Ogier were driving their DS3 WRC machines beyond their limits in a bid to finish in the points to salvage what has been a nightmare weekend for the French squad. Both works drivers retired on Day One, with Loeb on SS4 and Ogier on SS6 but are contesting the rest of the event under SupeRally regulations.
Ken Block (Monster World Rally Team) and Daniel Oliviera (Brazil WRT) also restarted Day Two under SupeRally regulations and were both steadily working themselves up the leader board in an attempt to break into the top 20.
