Sebastian Ogier and Vincent Landais overcame everything that Rallye Monte Carlo could throw their way to claim a dominant 10^th victory at the famous event. He used every ounce of experience he’d gained over the years to conquer the treacherous route, his only moment over the entire weekend came when he clipped a pole in Thursday evening’s third stage. Flawless, in other words.

Their winning margin over their Toyota Gazoo Racing teammates Elfyn Evans and Scott Martin was 18.5 seconds although the Welshman had to dig deep on Sunday as Hyundai’s new signing Adrien Fourmaux and Alex Coria closed to just four seconds in the fight for second overall.

Fourmaux started the day in third position overall but was quickly swept aside by a determined Ott Tanak/Martin Jarveoja in Sunday’s opening stage, not helped by the Frenchman’s slow time in the dark and icy stage.

Fourmaux struck back on stage 17, pummeling the Estonian’s time by 23.3 seconds on the penultimate test of the rally, demoting Tanak back to fourth. Tanak’s slow time put him into the clutches of Kalle Rovanpera/Jonne Halttunen and sure enough, in the final Wolf Power Stage, Tanak was pushed back to fifth.

Thierry Neuville and Martijn Wydaeghe had a torrid start to their title defense, clawing their way back to sixth place after three separate issues struck on Friday and Saturday while newbies Josh McErlean/Eoin Treacy brought their Ford Puma home without a scratch on it to complete their Rally1 debut in seventh.

Toyota locked out the top three Super Sunday points paying positions with Fourmaux and Neuville taking the crumbs home this time out.

The opening stage of the day took care of Sami Pajari who skidded into a bridge and landed in a ravine, while  Takamoto Katsuta buried his GR Yaris into the undergrowth 1.8km into the stage.

Johan Rossel/Arnaud Dunand were untouchable in their Citroen C3 Rally2, taking a dominant win in WRC2, beating the non-points scoring Nikolay Gryazin by 1’13.9”. Eric Camilli took a last gasp second place in WRC2, beating out Leo Rossel in the final stage. It was the younger Rossel’s first rally in WRC2 and a first podium…

Read the full story in Motorsport Monday tomorrow.

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With an overnight lead of 12.6 seconds in his back pocket, Sebastian Ogier spent Saturday gradually building his advantage to 24.4 seconds with one stage remaining. Running in 10^th position on the road, his final stage was run in darkness and he conceded 4.1 seconds to his second placed teammate Elfyn Evans, leaving the eight-time champion with 20.3 seconds with three Sunday stages remaining.

“I tried to manage the risk, which is not easy in Monte-Carlo,” the eight-time world champion reflected. “In these conditions you need to be prepared to lose a bit of time.”

Evans and co-driver Scott Martin were involved in a frenetic battle with Hyundai’s new signing Adrien Fourmaux and Alex Coria for second position overall. Fourmaux ended Friday’s action just 1.6 seconds behind the GR Yaris crew.

Saturday’s first stage saw the warring drivers tied on time. On stage 11, Fourmaux pipped Evans and took second place by half a second which became 2.8 seconds on the final stage of the morning loop.

The Welshman put his head down and re-took his runner-up place with a 1.7 second gap to the Frenchman but on the penultimate stage, the positions changed yet again, with Fourmaux 0.7 seconds ahead.

With light fading fast on the final stage, Evans did what he had to do and blitzed Fourmaux’s time to end the day with a 4.8 second advantage.

While the focus was on the fight for second, Ott Tänak and Martin Järveoja wrung the neck of their Hyundai, taking four stage wins to move to within 2.5 seconds of the podium. He’d closed in on Kalle Rovanperä during the morning loop, narrowing the gap to one second before surging ahead after the midday service.

After completing the final stage on Friday, Grégoire Munster and Louis Louka were forced to retire from the rally after encountering an electrical problem on the way back to the service park. The M-Sport Ford crew repaired the car and Munster thanked them by claiming his first ever WRC stage win, powering his Puma to the fastest time on the day’s opening stage by 0.8 seconds, beating Ogier and Rovanperä.

“Really good feeling”, beamed Munster. “Everyone was a bit gutted yesterday but I think this is a really big thank you for them, all the team that worked really hard last night. Years of commitment and work that finally get a reward, it is a very nice feeling.”

Rovanperä prefers fast, open stages and he was struggling to find the time, and ended the day in fifth, one position up on his flu-ridden teammate Takamoto Katsuta and Aaron Johnston, who set the fastest time on stage 12.

Sami Pajari continued his considered approach to the tricky rally, and held a solid seventh overall while the other novice, Josh McErlean entered the top ten in ninth place at the end of the longest day of the rally.

Neuville’s woes persisted in the morning when a mysterious power loss slowed him 1.4km into the opening stage. A quick system reset restored performance, but by that point the Belgian had already leaked another 50sec.

“I had to do a reset. The car went and then I lost the power like in Japan, we thought the trouble was gone. In the situation we were in we said to do a reset and we were fine since. No idea, no alarm, nothing. Now it is working,’ Neuville reported.

The three problem’s Neuville encountered over Friday and Saturday left the Belgian over five minutes off the lead.

In WRC2, Nikolay Gryazin held tenth but wasn’t eligible to score points, leaving Yohan Rossel with more than 2 minutes in hand over Gus Greensmith.

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