Sebastien Ogier survived a last-day scare on Sunday to clinch the 2013 Rally Portugal victory – his third consecutive of the season – after a very solid performance. The Frenchman went into the final day with a 34-second lead, but lost a substantial amount of time when his Volkswagen suffered from a slipping clutch on SS12.
A quick fix before SS13 got Ogier up and running again, team-mate Jari-Matti Latvala meanwhile lost second place to Mikko Hirvonen following a suspected broken driveshaft on his Polo WRC.
Latvala ultimately finished third, 3 minutes behind the leader and more than a minute ahead of M-Sport Ford driver Evgeny Novikov who settled for fourth, followed by team-mate Nasser Al-Attiyah in fifth.
Volkswagen’s third driver Andreas Mikkelsen settled for sixth, while Emiarti driver Khalid Al Qassimi finished ninth after a great showing on his Citroen.
Overall result:
01. Sebastien Ogier
02. Mikko Hirvonen
03. Jari-Matti Latvala
04. Evgeny Novikov
05. Nasser Al-Attiyah
06. Andreas Mikkelsen
07. Martin Prokop
08. Mads Ostberg
09. Khalid Al Qassimi
10. Esapekka Lappi