Tanak takes Rally Turkey lead following heavy attrition

Top 15 classification after SS13 at Rally Turkey

Ott Tanak has been handed the lead of Rally Turkey following multiple retirements from his World Rally Championship rivals including title contenders Thierry Neuville and Sebastien Ogier.

The Toyota Gazoo Racing driver, who came into the Turkish event with back-to-back wins in Finland and Germany, grabbed the lead following his victory on SS11 coupled with a mechanical issue for Hyundai's Andreas Mikkelsen which saw him penalised 3m 20s for repair works which made him 20 minutes late to the start of SS12.

Further disasters struck elsewhere with M-Sport Ford’s Ogier retiring following an off on SS10 while Toyota’s Esapekka Lappi also went out on the same stage with a mechanical breakdown.

A final premier class retirement followed before the start of SS12 when Citroen’s Craig Breen suffered a dramatic fire in his C3 WRC machine which completely gutted his car.

With Tanak avoiding any serious issues he duly stormed ahead for a potential hat-trick of WRC wins with a 13.1s lead on Toyota teammate Jari-Matti Latvala at the end of SS13 which rounded out a dramatic Saturday at Rally Turkey.

Hyundai’s Hayden Paddon also enjoyed a provisional podium promotion by avoiding any issues, just over one minute behind the leading Toyota duo, with M-Sport Ford’s Teemu Suninen in fourth place over two minutes behind the Kiwi.

Following his hefty time penalty, Mikkelsen has dropped to fifth place but over five minutes ahead of WRC2 class leader Henning Solberg in sixth place for Skoda.

Despite having to restart under Rally 2 rules following his Friday retirement with broken suspension, Elfyn Evans has moved up to seventh place in the overall classification for M-Sport Ford with Jan Kopecky (Skoda), Simone Tempestini (Citroen) and Chris Ingram (Skoda) completing the top ten.