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Day three of Rally de Portugal 2015 started with fresh drama for Elfyn Evans. Back in after an electrical fault yesterday, Evans hit a rock and reportedly lost his front right wheel. The dry grass around the Fiesta promptly caught fire, with the flames snaking their way into Evans’ wheel arch – cue Evans and Barritt, armed with sand, on their hands and knees doing their best to put the flames out.
 Al Qassimi, ever the gentleman, stopped as he approached them to check that everything was okay with the British pair, before continuing on in the stage. “We stopped, they had the fire extinguisher, we had to go.” said Al Qassimi. “It wasn’t a good start for me today.”Meanwhile, Ogier was on a big push this morning, eager to make up for those lost seconds yesterday, and was certainly hoping to set the fastest time on SS8. His VW teammate, Andreas Mikkelsen, pipped him to that gong, finishing 0.6 quicker than the World Champion. “Clean stage, very careful in the beginning. Better towards the end for me.” Ogier has now moved into fourth place, passing M-Sport’s Ott Tänak and Hyundai Motorsport’s Dani Sordo. Of course, Tänak is only 1.6 behind Ogier, and if we were talking about anyone other than the World Champion, we would say that Tänak could definitely push hard to get his place back. But this is Ogier, and he has no intention of staying in fourth – his eyes are on the prize, and that prize has ‘1st’ written on it.
Mikkelsen’s quick pace aided him in the overall standings. Kris Meeke, who was in second place at the end of the day yesterday, fell into third place; Mikkelsen has 1.5 seconds on him now. “This stage is slippery, Andreas was only one car in front of me and he had a bloody good time.” said Meeke. Watch this space readers, there’ll be one heck of a battle between these two drivers today. SS8 also spelled trouble for Hyundai Motorsport’s Thierry Neuville, who rolled his car in the middle of the stage and went off the road. Spectators rushed to his aid, helping Thierry and Nicolas Gilsoul to get the i20 back onto the stage. His teammate, Dani Sordo, commented on how this moment affected him. “He [Neuville] was in the middle of the road. We lost time there.” said Sordo. “We tried to pass, lost 8s.” Martin Prokop, rounding out the top 10, also commented on Thierry’s roll. “Very narrow, but you can pass [Neuville]. It’s slowing down the cars. Good stage though.” The current Rally leader, VW’s Jari-Matti Latvala, made a small mistake in SS8. “I came too fast at one of the left hand junctions, I had to turn with the handbrake and come back. Lost 5 seconds.” He didn’t seem too concerned, and was very aware of where he lost the time. Stay tuned for a series of big pushes from JML, who will not want to relinquish his lead to anyone today. Hayden Paddon had a similar issue to Latvala, and mentioned, “Couldn’t get a rhythm on the driving, overshot a junction, lost five seconds there.” The young Kiwi can be hard on himself, and often thinks he is driving badly when in fact, it’s the total opposite. Paddon is having a good rally so far, driving well and setting some strong stage times. Here’s the top 10 after SS8: Jari-Matti Latvala 1:19:13.8, Mikkelsen +9.9, Meeke +11.4, Ogier +20.4, Tänak +22, Sordo +33.6, Ostberg +41.5, Paddon +41.7, Kubica +1:41.2, Prokop +3:05.8 Story:irallylive.com
Photo: @tWORLD |
