Sebastien Ogier’s chances of winning the Rally Italia Sardegna has been further boosted on Saturday morning amid trouble for Citroen’s Mikko Hirvonen and Dani Sordo.
Hirvonen – who went quickest on the day’s opening stage (SS9) – was forced to retire from second place after putting his Citroen DS3 WRC off the road just 500 metres from the start of SS10. Dani Sordo meanwhile was relegated to fourth place having spun on SS11, this helped a surging Jari-Matti Latvala move to third place behind M-Sport Ford’s Thierry Neuville.
Latvala won yesterday’s double night stages and has proven extremely quick so far. He’s now 35 seconds down on Thierry Neuville who’s more than a minute away from Ogier.
Mads Ostberg’s hopes of a good result were over when he rolled his Fiesta WRC during yesterday‘s final special stage.
Leading positions after SS12: Pos Driver Team/Car Time/Gap 1. Sebastien Ogier VW 2h32m41.3s 2. Thierry Neuville M-Sport Ford + 1m15.9s 3. Jari-Matti Latvala VW + 1m51.4s 4. Dani Sordo Citroen + 2m12.2s 5. Andreas Mikkelsen VW + 2m32.1s 6. Martin Prokop Czech Ford + 6m56.0s 7. Michal Kosciuszko Lotos Ford + 9m24.4s 8. Elfyn Evans M-Sport Ford + 9m30.7s 9. Mads Ostberg M-Sport Ford + 12m17.1s 10. Khalid Al-Qassimi Citroen + 13m11.8s