Written by Evan Rothman
There were no siestas this afternoon in Salou, Spain, as Day Two of the WRC Rally Spain heated up dramatically.
Overnight leaders and seven-times World Rally Champions Sebastien Loeb/Daniel Elena (Citroen Total World Rally Team) swept through the day’s six all-asphalt stages to arrive at the overnight halt with a 44.4 second advantage over their rivals.
Sebastien Ogier/Julien Ingrassia (Citroen Junior Team) crashed their C4 WRC out of podium contention this morning after damaging his suspension. It took an agonizing 15 minutes to repair in the stage before they could limp to the Service Park. Their misfortune promoted Petter Solberg/Chris Patterson (Petter Solberg World Rally Team) into second place overall, and the Norwegian ace set about chasing down Loeb this afternoon.
Seemingly muted on Day One were Loeb’s teammates Dani Sordo/Diego Vallejo who made setup changes to their Citroen C4 WRC machine for today’s speed tests and their performance was re-ignited. Sordo charged from sixth overall to third by this evening, and is 15 seconds adrift of Solberg. The factory driver will be going hell-for-leather on the final loop of stages tomorrow, aiming to leapfrog into second place overall on his home event.
Ford’s hardworking crews of Jari-Matti Latvala/Miika Anttila and Mikko Hirvonen/Jarmo Lehtinen (BP Ford Abu Dhabi World Rally Team) are lying in fourth and fifth respectively after today’s six stages. Latvala has been the fastest of the Blue Oval competitors this weekend, and is only 1 minute 11 seconds behind the leader. His pace on asphalt has been very encouraging for the team and has also positioned him well to compete for third place overall tomorrow. Hirvonen is over five minutes off Latvala due to turbo problems on his car, and he leads a hard-charging Matthew Wilson/Scott Martin (Stobart Ford M-Sport Rally Team) in sixth who is driving strongly on the Salou asphalt this weekend.
The final day’s action will be run over two lops of two stages. The first stage (and its repeat being run in the afternoon) is a monster 42.04km-long stage while the remaining stage is sprint test of 4.11km. We can expect Solberg, Sordo and Latvala all aiming for the fastest stage time through this the longest stage of the rally. This stage, however, might also claim a long list of ‘victims’ should drivers lose concentration for even a split second. With Loeb running comfortably at the head of the leaderboard, it is unlikely he will relinquish his grasp on the rally lead easily. This sport is renowned for its unpredictability, as this rally has already shown, spectators lining the stages and following the rally on the Internet may yet still be in for a big surprise tomorrow.
• This article is also published on www.girlracer.co.uk. To read it, click HERE.