Coming into the final day of rally Argentina with 48s in hand, only a cruel mechanical curse could deny Hyundai driver Thiery Neuville the win in Argentina this weekend. Belgium’s finest driver put on a cautious but focused performance to win the rally ahead of team mate and best mate Andreas Mikkelsen by 40s. Today's victory coming on the Back of another victory in Corsica sees the korean squad driver extend his personal as well as hyundai’s lead in the championship.
Third Hyundai driver Dani Sordo finished 6th but his push in the Wolf power stage that played out on the summit of El Condor netted 4th and denied Ott Tanak more bonus points to drop this year’s championship favourites further away from the top of the provisional standings. Tanak led the rally on Friday before he was beset by mechanical problems and a spin that dropped him to third and then on Saturday retired with electrical failure. The toyota driver dropped out of the points scoring positions however fought back to finish 8th and score a paltry 3 points including 1 from the power stage.
Toyota whose car demonstrates clear superiority over the others won a lot of stages between their 3 drivers however, Kris Meeke and Jari Mati Latvala could only manage 4th and 5th respectively to leave the Japanese squad second in the manufacturers race. Latvala celebrated 200 WRC starts this weekend and his experience showed in El Condor. However it was not quite enough to win him the power stage.
That honour went to the defending and 6 time world champion Sebastian Ogier who rose out of a stormy week that saw him lose power steering and a provisional podium to drop into 8th on Saturday morning. The Citroen driver fought back and following Tanak’s retirement finished Saturday in 4th behind Meeke and then went up provisionally when Meeke was penalised 10s for a deviation. Meeke won the first two of three stages on Sunday to regain 3rd and establish a 5.2s gap before the power stage. With odds stacked against the champion, he ascended El Condor and by the time he got to the top, he had won the stage, 5 bonus points and taken 3rd place overall to bring his total overhaul from what was a bad weekend to 20.
It seems even if u deal him a bad car and then break it into half, he would still be in the money. You gotta love this man. Ogier moved to Ford M-Sport when VW pulled out of the championship and everyone thought it will be tough for him to win again. The Ford Fiesta turned out to be a decent enough car despite poor support from Ford of America. He won two drivers titles and one manufacturer title in two years. The fiesta remains a decent car in the hands of Elfyn Evans who dominated Corsica but then crashed terminally on Saturday in Argentina. Evans team mate the youthful Teemu Suninen finished 7th this weekend. More decent than the C3 that Ogier has won two rallies with this year already and is just 10 points off the top of the standings.
In two weeks The championship goes to Chile for the first time ever.
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