Rally of Sardinia – SS8: Neuville scores the win, Fourmaux loses everything!

While the Belgian driver once again set a better time on this Rally of Sardinia, his French teammate suffered a puncture and dropped to 5th place in the standings.

The first part of the second leg of the Rally of Sardinia was expected to be decisive, and it proved to be. Adrien Fourmaux and Alexandre Coria ( Hyundai i20N Rally1) , who led for almost the entire day yesterday, had four-tenths of a second to make up this morning at the start of SS8. Unfortunately, a puncture dropped the French duo to fifth overall, diminishing their chances of victory in Sardinia. Meanwhile, Thierry Neuville and Martijn Wydaeghe set their fourth fastest stage of the rally and now hold a 14,4-second lead over their new closest rivals, Oliver Solberg and Elliott Edmondson ( Toyota GR Yaris Rally1). A perfect result for the Swede, who is now virtually 12 points behind Elfyn Evans in the championship. Sébastien Ogier and Vincent Landais are therefore provisionally third.

Sami Pajari and Marko Salminen set the fourth fastest time on the stage and also benefited from Fourmaux and Coria’s puncture to move up one place overall. Elfyn Evans and Scott Martin remain sixth in the provisional standings, just behind the Hyundai bearing the number 16. Josh McErlean – Eoin Tracey, Takamoto Katsuta – Aaron Johnston, Jon Armstrong – Shane Byrne, Martins Sesks – Renars Francis, and Dani Sordo – Patricia Saiz complete the overall standings. In WRC2, Roope Korhonen made the most of the stage, provisionally taking the overall lead by 2,4 seconds over Gus Greensmith. Roberto Daprà, second on this stage, moves back up to third in the standings.

The provisional overall standings after SS8 (Rally1)…Read more by Pierre Barré