After dropping over half a minute on the opening day to winning Rally del Paraguay by 26.2 seconds, Sebastien Ogier’s 65th career win was one of his finest.
Light rain on Sunday shook things up as the showers came and went across the final four stages.
Ogier kept a cool head, but Mother Nature had other plans as he faced the worst of the rain in the final Wolf Power Stage where he dropped 20 seconds and out of the bonus points positions while his slender 0.3 second Super Sunday lead after the penultimate stage became fifth and a single point from what could well have been 10 extra points.
He was bitterly disappointed, such is his hunger to win a ninth title.
Elfyn Evans started the day in third place but lost his position in the day’s opening stage after clipping a bank which spat him into the bushes. Although he only lost seven seconds, Tanak passed him for the final podium place.
Tanak had a tyre come off the rim in the penultimate stage which dropped him to fifth behind teammate Thierry Neuville with Evans re-taking his podium slot.
The final stage – run as ever in the reverse order – saw the return of the rain for the later runners with Fourmaux and Ogier particularly hard hit.
Fourmaux, who led much of the rally on Friday and held second place throughout the event, had a poor final stage in the worsening conditions, and dropped to fourth, elevating Evans to the second step of the podium and Neuville onto the final step.
Fourmaux, Tanak and Rovanperä rounded out the top six.
Neuville took the full house of bonus points by winning Super Sunday and the Wolf Power Stage.
In the championship standings, Evans leads with 198 points followed by Ogier and Rovanpera who are tied on 189 points
Oliver Solberg took two more stage wins to clinch the WRC2 honours from Yohan Rossel and Nikolay Gryazin. Robert Virves had an awful final day and had to settle for fifth in WRC2.
Read the full story in Motorsport Monday tomorrow.
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