Ogier in charge with four stages to go

 

With just four stages of Rally Italia Sardegna to go, Sebastien Ogier remains firmly in control, the Volkswagen ace returning to the midday service with a lead of 1min 15.9sec over Thierry Neuville.

Ogier has led from the rally’s opening stage and was quickest on two of Saturday morning’s loop of four stages. With the repeat of those stages to come this afternoon, the Frenchman is on course for his fourth win of the season.
“Everything is perfect, we are trying to control the race now,” the Polo R driver said after SS12. “It’s a long day, and there’s still a long way to go. We just have to stay focused.” 
Behind Ogier, Saturday morning has seen plenty of churn in the top five, most notably the retirement from second of Mikko Hirvonen after the Finn went off on SS10 and got his Citroen DS3 stuck in a ditch.
This promoted Ford Fiesta RS driver Neuville into the provisional runner-up spot and, despite a couple of worrying moments on SS12, the Belgian remains on track to take the best WRC result of his career today.
“I went a bit wide at a junction on a very fast section but there was no damage,” he explained. “ I went really high on a jump too, but the [engine] temperature looks okay so hopefully no problems.”
Behind him, the story of the morning has been the progress of Volkswagen Polo R drivers Jari-Matti Latvala and Andreas Mikkelsen.
Latvala’s recovery from a costly puncture on the opening day has been remarkable, and the Finn is now third, 35.5s adrift of Neuville, after moving ahead of Citroen’s Dani Sordo on SS11 when the Spaniard spun his DS3.
Asked whether he could have a go at catching Neuville as well, Latvala said: “No, he’s been driving so well I have no chance. I don’t want to drive as hard as I did yesterday – it’s too risky. Now I try to control the position. I want to finish third. I’d be very pleased with that after our puncture on the first day.” 
Sordo is fourth, but feeling the pressure from Mikkelsen behind who is just 20.8ec away in Volkswagen’s third factory Polo.
“In SS12 I told Carlos [Del Barrio, co-driver] not to give me any split times because I just wanted to try and drive as fast as possible,” he said. “It went okay, but it’s been really slippery this morning and the rear of the car is sliding around a lot” 
Mikkelsen was almost two seconds quicker than Sordo on SS12 and has been given the green light by Volkswagen to fight for the place – potentially his best finish to date for the German manufacturer.
“The roads are cleaning so much that it’s difficult but we will see what we can do. Nothing crazy but we will push,” he said.
Czech driver Martin Prokop is well cushioned in sixth, more than four minutes behind the top five and more than two minutes ahead of Michal Kosciuszko in seventh.
Kosciuszko is embroiled in a close scrap with Elfyn Evans, both of whom are competing in Ford Fiesta RS cars for the first time.
World Rally Car debutant Evans had been seventh after SS11, but slipped 6.3sec behind his Polish rival after missing a braking point on SS12 and overshooting a junction.
Mads Ostberg is ninth, having restarted this morning following his roll on Friday night, while Khalid Al-Qassimi rounds off the top-ten places.
In the WRC 2 category, Robert Kubica won all four stages this morning in his Citroen DS3 RRC to stretch his lead to 2min 31.9sec. Abdulaziz Al-Kuwari remains second in a Ford Fiesta RRC, with Lorenzo Bertelli 1min 15sec behind in third in another Fiesta.
The battle for supremacy in WRC 3 looks as though it may go down to the final stage.
Stephane Consani leads Christian Riedemann by just 12.7sec. Series leader Sebastien Chardonnet, back up to third after a puncture yesterday, fell back with damaged steering to allow Keith Cronin into a podium place. All drivers are at the wheel of Citroen DS3 R3Ts.  

Rally Italy: Sebastien Ogier still leads, Jari-Matti Latvala surges

Sebastien Ogier maintained a serene lead as his Volkswagen team-mate Jari-Matti Latvala dominated Rally Italy's night stages.
Latvala had dropped two minutes with a puncture on the rally's opening stage on Friday morning, but has since proved that he had the pace to fight for a second straight victory.
He was untouchable on the two runs through the 13 kilometres of Gallura in increasing darkness on Friday evening, winning the first by 10 seconds and the second by 5s.
That brought him up to fifth place overall, but one of those positions was gained when Mads Ostberg became the second M-Sport Ford driver of the day to crash out.
Ostberg had been running fourth, close behind Mikko Hirvonen and Thierry Neuville's battle for second, when he rolled early on SS8.
With team-mate Evgeny Novikov having crashed heavily on Friday morning when third, Neuville is now M-Sport's last podium hope.
The Belgian continues to pile pressure on Hirvonen, closing to within 3.1s of the second-placed Citroen at the end of leg one.
Ogier's lead over this battle is now up to 46.6s.
Dani Sordo has drifted half a minute away from the podium fight in fourth, with the flying Latvala now only 24.6s behind him.
Andreas Mikkelsen lost out to his Finnish team-mate's recovery charge and is sixth.
Robert Kubica lost a chunk of his WRC 2 lead when the one-minute gaps in start times for his class left him battling huge dust problems.
But he is still 1m10s ahead of new second-place man Abdulaziz Al-Kuwari and is up to 10th overall. Sepp Wiegand has retired with engine problems.

Leading positions after SS8:

Pos  Driver              Team/Car        Time/Gap
 1.  Sebastien Ogier     VW            1h40m47.3s
 2.  Mikko Hirvonen      Citroen          + 46.6s
 3.  Thierry Neuville    M-Sport Ford     + 49.7s
 4.  Dani Sordo          Citroen        + 1m19.4s
 5.  Jari-Matti Latvala  VW             + 1m44.0s
 6.  Andreas Mikkelsen   VW             + 1m55.4s
 7.  Martin Prokop       Czech Ford     + 4m50.4s
 8.  Michal Kosciuszko   Lotos Ford     + 6m25.6s
 9.  Elfyn Evans         M-Sport Ford   + 6m34.5s
10.  Robert Kubica       PH Citroen    + 8m35.3s

Mercedes reprimanded, suspended from young driver test

Mercedes have been suspended from participating in this year's young driver test, it was announced Friday, after the FIA’s International Tribunal (IT) deemed that the private tyre test conducted by the team with Pirelli in Barcelona last month constituted a breach of the Formula One rules. Both Mercedes and Pirelli have also been reprimanded and they will each share the costs of the case equally with the FIA.
The test was the subject of a protest lodged by rivals Red Bull and Ferrari at the Monaco Grand Prix after it emerged that the three-day, 1000-kilometre session had been run using Mercedes’ 2013 car, in contravention of the regulations, which prohibit the use of current cars for such tests.
Although the IT found that Mercedes had broken Article 22 of the F1 sporting regulations, it said that there was no intention by the team to obtain any unfair sporting advantage and that both Mercedes and Pirelli had acted in good faith at all times.
It deemed that Mercedes had no reason to believe that FIA approval had not been given for the test following the team’s communications with the governing body’s race director, Charlie Whiting, but that Whiting’s actions on behalf of the FIA were taken in good faith and with the intention of assisting the parties and consistent with sporting fairness.
However, it found that Pirelli had failed to offer other teams a similar opportunity to test, which was a proviso given by Whiting when he was initially asked by Mercedes and Pirelli whether such a test might be possible.
It also determined that Mercedes did gain some material advantage from the test - even if it was only confirmation of what had not gone wrong - and that Pirelli were aware of this and that they had intended to pass some confidential data to Mercedes, even if that data was of limited use to the team since they were unaware of the tyre specifications being tested.
As such, the IT deemed both Mercedes and Pirelli to have also breached the International Sporting Code, since the test was prejudicial to the interests of competition.
For the IT's full decision, click here.

Sardinia WRC: Jari-Matti Latvala fastest in qualifying for VW

Volkswagen driver Jari-Matti Latvala won the qualifying stage for Rally Italy Sardinia.
The Volkswagen driver's second qualifying win in three rallies gives him the choice of where to run on the road for the opening day of gravel stages on Friday.
Latvala arrives on the Italian island fresh from his first victory in a Polo R WRC in Greece, and that confidence from the Acropolis Rally remained.
"I feel good," said Latvala. "The car is nice, we have no problems. I am feeling confident with things and I like this rally."
M-Sport driver Evgeny Novikov was second in his Ford, 0.690 seconds behind, with Latvala's team-mate and world championship leader Sebastien Ogier third, albeit 1.571s slower over the 2.39-mile stage.
Mikko Hirvonen was top Citroen driver in fourth place. Thierry Neuville took fifth - the Belgian feeling his Fiesta RS WRC was missing some traction under braking.
P-G Andersson was 10th quickest qualifier on his return to World Rally Car driving, while Elfyn Evans was 11th in his first ever qualifying session. Both are driving Fiesta RS WRCs.

Volkswagen agrees to freeze development of WRC car

Volkswagen has agreed to freeze the car development in the World Rally Championship in order to help maintain the presence of Citroen and M-Sport in the series next year.
The three factory World Rally cars reach the end of a homologation cycle at the end of this year, with new cars expected for 2014.
The £3m cost of producing a new car would likely mean the end to M-Sport's participation in the WRC next year.
With that in mind, Volkswagen has lobbied the FIA to maintain the current specification of cars, even if that compromises its own chances of success.
Volkswagen team principal Jost Capito said: "We talked about what is best for the future and what's the best to keep the level of entries up in the championship.
"And after talking about all of this, we found that the best way is to stay with the cars we have for this year."
Volkswagen had already started work on the evolution of its Polo R WRC, which has been an immediate hit taking four wins from six rounds so far this season.
That car will not be seen until at least 2015 after Capito decided to put the WRC's competitiveness first.
"It's fair to say," said Capito, "that we have taken away some of our potential performance advantage for the good of the sport."
M-Sport's Malcolm Wilson was fulsome in his praise of Capito.
"We are very grateful for this," said Wilson. "As you can imagine for the likes of myself and Yves [Matton, Citroen team principal], it's a real positive move.
"We know we can still be competitive next year without having to spend millions on development.
"This has kept the championship open and, to be honest, we couldn't have done a new homologation unless Ford had come back; we wouldn't have been in position to spend the millions needed.
"OK, Volkswagen has still got the best two, if not three, drivers in the sport, but at least, after Jost's proposal, we know that the cars are going to be on a level playing field for next season."
The FIA confirmed that, via a fax vote, the current homologation of World Rally Cars has been frozen until the end of next season.