Like Marcus he has found it difficult not pushing to win, but with conditions better on day 2, thanks to strong winds, which kept the fog away, the Frenchman has had an easier time. He finished up more than 30 seconds off Gronholm in P2, but also well ahead of
Petter Solberg in P4.
“The weather conditions today were much better than the first day,” said the
Citroen man, who is going for his fourth drivers’ title on the trot. “I’ve had no problems and I’m trying to be as smooth as possible.
“Everything is going to plan. I’m doing what I have to – there will be no attack from me on this rally.”
Further down the order, Petter Solberg is fourth and while he had been hoping to attack Loeb and try and get third, any hope of achieving that vanished on the first stage of the day, when he spun in his Impreza and lost around 25 seconds trying to re-start the engine.
Daniel Sordo is next up after a solid showing in the #2 Citroen C4 WRC. The Spaniard didn’t like the conditions one bit on Friday, but was more comfortable on Saturday, even though the stages were still very slippery due to more heavy rain.
Of the rest,
Chris Atkinson and
Matthew Wilson have spent the leg squabbling over sixth. Atkinson went in front this morning on the very first stage and while Wilson cut the gap to just 0.3 seconds after SS10, he lost out in SS11, SS12 and SS13 – and finished 10 seconds back in his
Stobart Ford Focus.
OMV Kronos Citroen’s Manfred Stohl rounds out the provisional points’ scorers in eighth, 55.5 seconds off the battle for P6 and a similar amount up on Xavier Pons, who is ninth in the ‘third’ SWRT-run Impreza.
Mads Ostberg completes the top ten, with Skoda privateer, Jan Kopecky eleventh and
Jari-Matti Latvala 12th.
Latvala was the star of the day and having re-started under the SupeRally, after going out on the final stage on day 1, he really turned it on, setting the pace in all the ‘proper’ stages. The Stobart man though didn’t make much progress up the leader-board, as the time lost in SS6 was simply too much.
