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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Chasing his record-breaking 10^th Rallye Monte Carlo victory, Sebastian Ogier and Vincent Landais slithered their Toyota Gazoo Racing GR Yaris to the top of the leaderboard after the first full day of action at the opening round of the FIA World Rally Championship.

The six stages – five were run after SS5 was cancelled due a spectator medical event – had it all. Dry tarmac, wet tarmac, wet mud, and of course, black ice, making grip levels unpredictable at best and a nerve-wracking lottery at worst. Teams had a wide array of Hankook’s new rubber to choose from and countless variations abounded. Full studs, studded crossed with full winter, or even super-soft rubber all round.

Kalle Rovanpera and Jonne Halttunen set the timing sheets alight and set the benchmark time on stage four, but the most impressive drive came from Grégoire Munster/Louis Louka in the their M-Sport Ford Puma,  only 1.4 seconds behind the double WRC Champion.

All the top runners had the same storyline; difficult to predict how much and where, grip was available.

Stage six saw the first of several incidents: Thierry Neuville/Martijn Wydaeghe arrived at a sharp right-hand corner and couldn’t slow down enough. The Hyundai slithered over a mound on the apex of the corner which pitched the i20 N into a ditch on the opposite side of the road. The left-rear corner was wrecked, but the reigning champion dragged his car through the rest of the stage and back to the service park.

 “I think we paid the price for not having enough experience with the tyre for the dry section, it felt like the tyre was quite stable then suddenly I lost the brakes, saw the ditch and lost the rear’”, the Belgian explained.

Hyundai teammate Ott Tanak and Martin Järveoja also had a moment, understeering into a ditch, missing a pole by inches and running along the ditch until he could floor the throttle to get back on to the road. At the stage end, after surveying what was left of his car, the Estonian said: “There is a lot missing but I am happy to be here. Some black ice was there.”

Ogier too, had a moment, a briefly ‘ditched’ his GR Yaris as well, but he got away with it. Sami Pajari/Marko Salminen went off in exactly the same place as Ogier, pulling a tyre off the rim.

Adrien Fourmaux/Alex Coria won the stage with another team-leader-esque drive from Munster, who went second quickest, beating such luminaries as Ogier, rally leader Elfyn Evans, Rovanpera and Tanak.

The afternoon loop went relatively quietly, except for Evans and Neuville. The Welshman had a spin in SS8. “I was proper steady, it just started to go and I couldn’t recover. I was on the ice, we just went a margin too far, we were almost there. We had the information, it was Bambi on ice,” he shrugged.

The spin cost Evans the lead which was now in Ogier’s hands.

Neville had a carbon copy incident on SS9 at the same corner as his stage six faux pas. This time though, he’d suffered a puncture beforehand but with the same result, bouncing over the mound and across the road into the same ditch nose first, albeit without further damage. He elaborated: “I was punctured far before, left front puncture since the beginning. We tried to go as far and as fast as we could but at some time the tyre just went and we went straight again.”

It was a French one-two in stages eight and nine with Ogier heading Fourmaux on the timesheets. At the close of business, Ogier led teammate Evans by 12.6 seconds with Fourmaux threateningly close, 1.6 seconds back in third.

Rovanpera, Tanak and Munster rounded out the top six.

In WRC2, Yohan and Leo Rossel’s Citroen C3s sandwiched Eric Camilli’s Hyundai, although Nikolay Gryazin – who is not registered to score points on this round – was keeping Skoda’s flag flying, 21.4 seconds behind Rossel (Y).

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There had been no major incident on WRC Croatia for 17 stages. That changed in dramatic fashion on Sunday’s second stage.

Sébastien Ogier jumped from third to first overall on a dramatic Sunday at Croatia Rally, claiming a surprise win as Thierry Neuville and Elfyn Evans faced heartbreak.

After three days of neck and neck competition on spectator-packed asphalt roads around capital city Zagreb, victory looked set to be decided between Neuville, driving a Hyundai i20 N, and Welshman Evans in a Toyota GR Yaris.

Stage 18, the second of the day, saw the overnight leader too fast into a left-hander and slid wide before riding up a bank and into a tree. The impact destroyed his Hyundai’s rear aerodynamics package but, more importantly, cost him almost 25sec.

Unaware of his rival’s problem, Evans misjudged a tightening right-hand bend in the very same stage and spun, dropping 20sec as he tried to get his car pointing in the right direction. It meant that Ogier, who had occupied third place since the opening stage on Friday morning, suddenly gained a 9.1sec lead with two stages remaining.

Ogier made no errors and kept Toyota team-mate Evans at bay – celebrating his second Croatia Rally triumph by 9.7sec along with a milestone 100th WRC podium and 69^th career win.

“It’s been a tough weekend,” admitted Ogier, who was co-driven by Vincent Landais. “We knew coming here that our start position would be an issue, but we never gave up and kept the pressure on for the whole weekend. I don’t think I’ve ever had so many moments in one rally, but it’s nice to get the win for the team.”

Nikolay Gryazin headed a comfortable Citroen 1 – 2 in the WRC2 results.

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Sébastien Ogier announced his return to FIA World Rally Championship action by winning Thursday morning’s Croatia Rally shakedown.

Eight-time WRC champion Sébastien Ogier is back in action for the first time since the season-opening Rallye Monte-Carlo in January but wasted no time in getting back up to speed on the dry roads east of the capital city Zagreb.

The Frenchman was third-quickest on his first attempt at the 3.65km Okić test but shaved almost four seconds off his time to top the leaderboard on his second and penultimate run. His GR Yaris Rally1 team-mate Elfyn Evans was 0.7sec behind while Hyundai i20 N pair Thierry Neuville and Ott Tänak set identical pace in third and fourth.

Ogier won the inaugural Croatia Rally in 2021, and his Toyota Gazoo Racing team has celebrated victory in every edition of the Balkan event.

“It is good to be back,” he said. “Two and a half months [away] is a very long time, but the [pre-event] test last week was useful, and I feel very happy here.” M-Sport Ford driver Adrien Fourmaux is targeting his third consecutive WRC podium and started the rally strongly, placing his Puma Rally1 just 2.5sec back from the leading pace in fifth. Behind him was Hyundai’s Andreas Mikkelsen, while Takamoto Katsuta and Grégoire Munster finished seventh and eighth respectively.

Just three-tenths of a second split Citroën’s WRC2 teammates Nikolay Gryazin and Yohan Rossel, who rounded out the top 10 in their identical C3 Rally2 cars.

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