Sebastien Ogier and Vincent Landais had a mission on Sunday – go and win the rally. Super Sunday lived up to its name with a spectacular fight between Ogier and Thierry Neuville with the fight for fourth, fifth and sixth between Josh McErlean/Eoin Treacy, Adrien Fourmaux/Alex Coria and Sami Pajari/Marko Salminen every bit as tense.
The nine-time WRC Champion took the second fastest time on the opening stage, which was the longest of the entire rally but crucially, he was 5.4 seconds faster than Neuville, enough to take the lead off the Hyundai driver – who had led the rally since stage two – by 1.3 seconds.
The next stage, SS15, saw the two rivals tie for the stage win leaving the gap at 1.3 seconds with two stages and 42km of racing remaining. The rally became a two stage, 42km sprint!
Takamoto Katsuta and Aaron Johnston were in an untroubled third overall.
Fourmaux suffered another puncture, his third of the event, slipping just over a minute behind McErlean, who was on course to score his best ever WRC result in fourth, with Pajari, sixth, just 0.9 seconds behind the hampered Hyundai.
The Rally of the Gods wasn’t quite finished though, for McErlean out braked himself in the penultimate stage, leaving the Puma dangling over a big drop. Somehow, he recovered to the stage, but his lead over Fourmaux was cut to just 14.1 seconds.
The fight for the rally lead withered in SS16 when Neuville suffered a double rear puncture, dropping 53.5 seconds. It was game over for the Belgian with just 16.6km of racing left.
The Wolf Power Stage saw Ogier take the win – and the points, as well as topping the Super Sunday standings. Pajari, Neuville, Katsuta and Elfyn Evans banked the rest of the Wold Power Stage bonus points.
McErlean hung on to fourth with Pajari in fifth and Fourmaux in sixth and Evans in seventh.
The WRC2 fight between the Toksport Skoda teammates of Andreas Mikkelsen and Robert Virves also came to a dramatic end when Mikkelsen was forced to stop and change a flat tyre in SS15 after leading the category from the start.
Virves duly brought his Fabia home for his third career victory.
Elfyn Evans, who endured a miserable weekend, still leads the championship leaderboard but his lead has been cut to seven points.
Read the full report in Motorsport Monday tomorrow.
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