Rally Mexico - Day One
WRC championship leader Sebastien Ogier currently leads Rally Mexico by 13.5 seconds after the first full day, from Thierry Neuville and Jari-Matti Latvala. Hyundai driver Neuville had looked quite capable of closing up on Ogier's Volkswagen on the long El Chocolate stage and he halved Ogier's advantage on the early splits, but Neuville's victory bid ended in the closing miles of the stage, as he picked up a puncture and then rolled off the road.
Latvala was closing on both Neuville and Ogier by that time after winning the afternoon's opening Los Mexicanos stage. By the end of the Las Minas stage, Latvala had got Ogier's lead down to 10.9s, but he then made a minor error on the evening superspecial that dropped him back 13.5s as Ogier hung on to the lead he'd earlier predicted would be impossible to achieve when running first on the road.
Mads Ostberg is now in third place for Citroen after responding to a growing threat from Andreas Mikkelsen in the third team-VW by winning Las Minas and re-establishing a 16s cushion. Elfyn Evans is fifth, with Dani Sordo's efforts to catch him hampered by a puncture.
Both Kris Meeke and Robert Kubica had looked particularly strong and lead contenders, with the Citroen driver quickest of all on SS3 and Kubica setting a dominant pace on the first of the 26-mile-long El Chocolate stage. But Meeke crashed out early on that stage and Kubica stopped, leaving just seven of the 14 World Rally Cars that started the event are still running. In addition to Neuville, Ott Tanak, Kris Meeke, Hayden Paddon and Robert Kubica's errors, both Benito Guerra and Lorenzo Bertelli went off on El Chocolate.
With so many likely to return under Rally2 regulations on Saturday, Ogier will no longer be running first on the road for day two, as the drivers rejoining take his place in the least-favourable starting positions. Efforts continue to raise Tanak's M-Sport Ford from the bed of the lake into which it crashed on Friday morning after he went off on the first stage of the morning, but M-Sport believes it possible to revive the car for leg two if it can be brought back to service.
Results after SS10:
Pos - Driver - Team - Car - Gap
1 Sebastien Ogier Volkswagen Motorsport Volkswagen 1h45m03.0s
2 Jari-Matti Latvala Volkswagen Motorsport Volkswagen 13.5s
3 Mads Ostberg Citroen Total Abu Dhabi WRT Citroen 29.5s
4 Andreas Mikkelsen Volkswagen Motorsport II Volkswagen 45.2s
5 Elfyn Evans M-Sport World Rally Team Ford 1m03.9s
6 Daniel Sordo Hyundai Motorsport Hyundai 1m40.5s
7 Martin Prokop Jipocar Czech National Team Ford 2m03.5s
8 Yuriy Protasov Ford 4m57.7s
9 Nasser Al-Attiyah Ford 5m15.2s
10 Nicolas Fuchs Ford 7m58.7s
7th March, 2015