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SS11 is the 12.87km Wieliczki test – it’s another high speed one, and follows narrow roads, beginning on asphalt before moving onto thickly-covered gravel roads. Due to hanging dust, the starting gaps between the cars has been increased to three minutes.
 Before the stage begun, there was the news that Elfyn Evans has been forced to retire with a water pump issue after SS10. There are only two stages tomorrow, so whether he will re-enter under Rally2 rules is questionable. Quickest through this stage was Ott Tanak – the Estonian lead the rally for a large part of yesterday despite brake problems, and with those now fixed, he’s clearly clean to regain as much time as possible. ‘Better, but I’m just driving my own pace.’ explained Ott. ‘I just do my best and see where it gets us.’ His stage win puts him 17.5 seconds down on rally leader Ogier overall, and just 3.7 seconds behind third-placed Jari-Matti Latvala. Second quickest through the stage was Andreas Mikkelsen, just two tenths slower than Tanak – he’d complained about visibility issues in stage 10 and so is clearly finding improved pace with the new start spacing. ‘Much better visibility and that was very close to a perfect run for me. We want to fight, so thanks to the organisers for increasing the time gaps.’ he added. Robert Kubica has had a number of excellent stage times so far this weekend, on his home rally, and he continued that with a third quickest stage time, edging closer to Neuville for sixth overall. ‘The first split was good but in the second half, in the tight and twisty stuff, I lost out because I didn’t have the precision. Overall I can be happy.’ Jari-Matti Latvala, an ever-impressive Hayden Paddon and Sebastien Ogier complete the top six. The next test for the crews is the 21.25km Swietajno test, set to begin at 10:30 local time. |
