Sebastian Ogier and Vincent Landais overcame everything that Rallye Monte Carlo could throw their way to claim a dominant 10th victory at the famous event. He used every ounce of experience he’d gained over the years to conquer the treacherous route, his only moment over the entire weekend came when he clipped a pole in Thursday evening’s third stage. Flawless, in other words.
Their winning margin over their Toyota Gazoo Racing teammates Elfyn Evans and Scott Martin was 18.5 seconds although the Welshman had to dig deep on Sunday as Hyundai’s new signing Adrien Fourmaux and Alex Coria closed to just four seconds in the fight for second overall.
Fourmaux started the day in third position overall but was quickly swept aside by a determined Ott Tanak/Martin Jarveoja in Sunday’s opening stage, not helped by the Frenchman’s slow time in the dark and icy stage.
Fourmaux struck back on stage 17, pummeling the Estonian’s time by 23.3 seconds on the penultimate test of the rally, demoting Tanak back to fourth. Tanak’s slow time put him into the clutches of Kalle Rovanpera/Jonne Halttunen and sure enough, in the final Wolf Power Stage, Tanak was pushed back to fifth.
Thierry Neuville and Martijn Wydaeghe had a torrid start to their title defense, clawing their way back to sixth place after three separate issues struck on Friday and Saturday while newbies Josh McErlean/Eoin Treacy brought their Ford Puma home without a scratch on it to complete their Rally1 debut in seventh.
Toyota locked out the top three Super Sunday points paying positions with Fourmaux and Neuville taking the crumbs home this time out.
The opening stage of the day took care of Sami Pajari who skidded into a bridge and landed in a ravine, while Takamoto Katsuta buried his GR Yaris into the undergrowth 1.8km into the stage.
Johan Rossel/Arnaud Dunand were untouchable in their Citroen C3 Rally2, taking a dominant win in WRC2, beating the non-points scoring Nikolay Gryazin by 1’13.9”. Eric Camilli took a last gasp second place in WRC2, beating out Leo Rossel in the final stage. It was the younger Rossel’s first rally in WRC2 and a first podium…
Read the full story in Motorsport Monday tomorrow.
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