The 2015 Rally Championship leader, Volkswagen’s Sebastien Ogier, withdrew from the event today on the first stage the second day. It is not clear at this stage what the car’s problem is, but competitors that went past said the engine sounded very bad, much like a tractors. The car is now been taken back to the service area where it will investigated.
Stage 2, that was to be the longest of the rally, but had to be shortened because of rain, was very difficult and many competitors came out of the stage with the one or other problem. Kris Meeke in a Abu Dhabi WRT Citroen DS3, set the fastest time of 38:26.2 in spite of having not handbrake.
At the end of the stage he said he started driving like a Finn using the “flink” to get through the corners, but had to be very careful. Dani Sordo, in the WRC Hyundai i20, was second, 32.7 seconds behind Meeke, but complained that he had a very difficult time in the stage since his power steering stopped working.
Third after the two strages was Jari-Matti Latvala in the second of the WRC Volkswagen Polo R cars. He said that he took it easy and took no chanches. He is 44.6 secs behind Meeke.
Fifth overall weas Hadden Paddon in the third of the Hyundai i20 cars 47.6 behind. This was his comments at the end of the stage: “Fifth fastest in 39m11.4sec. That’s a hell of an achievement when you hear what happened in stage: After about 3km, all the engine mounts broke. After just 3km that’s ridiculous. Then we lost a drive shaft and now we have a hole in the turbo so no power. Crazy.”
More later…