Rally Italia-Sardegna / Rally review
Fire!
However Mikko Hirvonen produced
the biggest news on his way to the
first passing of the Coiluna-Crastazza
stage. “We just had a normal stop to
change tyres,” explains the Finn. “And
everything was normal when we set of
for the following stage. Then I noticed
some flames and we got out of the car.
We emptied several fire extinguishers
on the flames but we could not prevent
them from taking over and in no time the
car was completely ablaze.” All the two
drivers could do was to walk away to a
safe distance and see the car change
to a charred wreck. It was immediately
clear they would not be able to do Rally
2 tomorrow. This car would never drive
again.
26/44
Volkswagen charge
The Hyundai Day was over at the end
of the morning loop at the Loelle stage.
First Neuville had to stop with suspension problems. He was able to get the
car going again but lost a considerable
amount of time there. It was worse for
Hänninen. He rolled of the road and
damaged his car to severely to think
about restarting. “We made a mistake during recce,” explains Hänninen.
Meanwhile Latvala does a remarkable
job. Of course his road position being
second was not helping and his earlier
brake problems did not add to the “relaxed feeling’ he had before the start.
However during the day he managed to
get to grips with the situation and catapulted himself into the lead. Ogier on
his turn also climbed the ladder of the
leaderboard and at the end of the day
he found himself in second. Østberg,
Mikkelsen and Kubica made up the provisional top five after Friday’s battles.
Latvala vs Ogier
The rest of the rally really was a battle between the two Volkswagen drivers Latvala and Ogier. Latvala opened
the second day by being seconds faster
than his rival. But Ogier retaliated and
won back eleven on the next one the infamous Monte Lerno stage. “That could
have been more,” fumed Ogier at stage
end. “I heard on the team radio that Latvala had stopped. So I slowed down a
bit. Then I heard he was moving again.
So I had to build up my speed again.”
Latvala’s co-driver Mikka Anttila later
explained that an overheating warning was showing in the car. “I informed
the team by radio and told them we
maybe had to stop. Then the car went
into road mode and the temperature
dropped again. So we could continue.”
At service a faulty sensor seemed to
have caused the problem. The second
passing of the Monte Lerno stage again
brought trouble for Latvala. “I went wide
and got a puncture,” said Latvala. He
had to change the tyre and lost over two
minutes. Virtually handing victory to his
teammate.
Ogier was on form again, while Hänninen started when but finished badly when he rolled out
of the event. Latval was on the pace untill a puncture slowed him down.