Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville leads proceedings after Saturday’s running in Rallye Monte-Carlo amid Sebastien Ogier claiming a landmark 700th stage win in the World Rally Championship.
The rally lead swapped between Elfyn Evans, Neuville and Ogier throughout Saturday, but with issues befalling the Welshman, it was up to Neuville and Ogier to duke it out on Saturday afternoon.
After Friday’s running was complete with the conclusion of SS8, Elfyn Evans was the rally leader in his Toyota Gazoo Racing GR Yaris Rally1 by a margin of 4.5 seconds over Ogier, with Neuville 16.1 seconds back.
Neuville set out his stall on Friday morning by hitting the SS9 with superior pace in his Hyundai i20N Rally1, eclipsing Evans’ time by 9.6 seconds and Ogie by 18.8 seconds, thus changing the overall order to Evans, Neuville (+6.5s), Ogier (13.7s).
The Belgian then assumed the Rally lead in the next stage, with Evans suffering “a little issue” which was a lack of hybrid, concerning 7.4s to Neuville as a result. Still, Ogier wasn’t hanging around and sliced 2.1s out of Neuville on SS10 and just 5.1s covered the trio after the penultimate stage of the morning route.
Neuville set the pace once again heading into the afternoon break, stretching his overall lead over Evans to 5.1s, with the Toyota driver admitting that “maybe the feeling wasn’t perfect” amid a dirty tarmac surface in SS11.
At this point, Ogier trailed Neuville by 7.7s after dropping another 2.1s in SS11 and the record Monte winner admitted “It would be better if we didn’t give away so much time this morning.”
Action resumed in the afternoon with another trio of stages and Ogier claimed the first stage win to close in to just 2.2s behind Neuville as Evans slipped further back, 16.5s off of the overall lead and claiming “that’s a big surprise. “I’m surprised it’s so bad.”
“I think I’m really struggling in the low grip sections,” the Welshman added after SS13, having dropped another 7.6s on that stage to trail the rally lead by 21.9s.
SS13 belonged to Ogier, who went 3.0s faster than Neuville to take the stage win (the 700th of his career) and rally lead by less than a second.
Ogier was in the ascendancy and looking for three consecutive stage wins in the afternoon to head into Sunday in style, but Neuville responded well, going 4.1s faster than Ogier to take the rally lead by 3.3s.
“We did a good stage, it was perfection,” Neuville said. “Everything went well and I really enjoyed the car – it was incredible. It’s important to take the points tonight but we also needed to keep the car on the road. I had a good feeling so went for it and it seems like it paid off.”
After declaring his rally long fight to top the classification, Ogier said “It looks like we need to try harder tomorrow” as he looks to extend his Monte winning record.
Evans had gone from rally leader at the start of Saturday to adrift by 34.9s at the end of the day’s running and said the afternoon had “not been what we hoped for.
“The feeling is not where it was for some reason, but that’s how it is. Tomorrow with the new format is sort of like the start of a new day, so that’s what we’ll treat it like.”
The new format, assuming runners finish the Rally on Sunday, will see Neuville awarded 18 points for leading at the end of Saturday, with a 15-13-10-8-6-4-3-2-1 sliding points scale for the runners behind.
Sunday will see points awarded based on the day’s running only (with the Rally winner still declared via overall time through the whole event), awarded in a scale of 7-6-5-4-3-2-1 with the final Power Stage bonus points still on offer as well.
Back to the rally, Hyundai’s Ott Tänak led the order behind the top three +1:37.6s off of the rally lead, followed by M-Sport Ford’s Adrien Fourmaux (+2:35.0s) and Hyundais Andreas Mikkelsen (+4:8.7s).
Elsewhere, Grégoire Munster’s day came to an early end when he beached his M-Sport Ford Puma Rally1 6.3km into SS12 after going off the road – hopes dashed, but luckily he and co-driver Louis Louka were unharmed.
In WRC2, Nikolay Gryazin in his Citroen C3 Rally2 machine leads Pepe López in his Skoda Fabia RS Rally2 by 0.2s.
Rallye Monte-Carlo concludes Sunday with a further three stages.
