Thierry Neuville leads the WRC Central European Rally by 6.9 seconds from Sebastian Ogier at the end of Friday’s six stages and 111km of racing across sometimes damp and treacherously slippery roads in the Czech Republic, coated with leaves as Autumn sets in over the northern hemisphere.
If the CER was to end on Friday, Thierry Neuville and Martin Wydaeghe would be World Rally Champions. It hasn’t ended, but he is the required two points ahead of his teammate Ott Tänak and Martin Järveoja, who lie third overall.
Neuville powered into the lead of the penultimate round of the WRC in stage five, enjoying a 2.7 second advantage over the leading Toyota GR Yaris of Sebastian Ogier and Vincent Landais, who lost a few seconds after running wide in the stage when conditions were a combination of damp roads and slippery autumn leaves.
“We stopped so nothing happened”, said Ogier at the end of stage interview. “We lost a bit of time. Wasn’t a good stage for me.”
Neuville inched away over the afternoon loop of three stages with two second fastest times in stages six and eight and winning stage seven, ending his visit to the Czech Republic in the pound seats.
“I am happy to be at the end. It is easy to make a mistake and I knew the only thing that was important to us was to make it to the end. Some spots are falling of rain, but it is quite greasy in there, so we played it safe and came through,” said Neuville.
The margins between the top four are tiny: Tänak is three seconds adrift of Ogier and Elfyn Evans/Scott Martin are 0.8 seconds behind Tänak.
Takamoto Katsuta and Aaron Johnston were in the fight – the Japanese driver won stage six – but he fell away as the day progressed to end fifth overall.
Sami Pajari and Enni Mälkönen ended sixth overall, ahead of the two M-Sport Ford Puma’s of Adrien Fourmaux/Alex Coria and Grégoire Munster/Louis Louka, both suffered hybrid issues in stage four, as did Andreas Mikkelsen and Sami Pajari.
Mikkelsen exited stage left, or more accurately, stage right when he understeered off the road and through a fence in the high-speed fifth stage. With his wrecked Hyundai resting well into the road, the stage was red flagged.
In WRC2, Nikolay Gryazin/Konstantin Aleksandrov lead the way 3.1 seconds ahead of the non-points scoring Oliver Solberg, with Filip Mares/Radovan Bucha in a net second in WRC2.
Yohan Rossel/Florian Barral are fifth, but 1:36.7 away from the lead of a rally they must win to stay in title contention.
There’s still 177.5km and ten stages remaining and in spite of his “It’s over now” comment at the end of Thursday’s stages, it clearly isn’t.
