Rally Italia Sardegna continues to offer surprises. One after the other. This time the stage for what happened was the SS13, the 19.57 km long Su Filigosu. After part of the test mainly carried out without rain, the rain started to fall strongly while Thierry Neuville was about halfway through the test.
The Belgian of Hyundai, thanks also to a good advantage accumulated over his rivals who took part in practice before him, managed to resist and obtain an excellent result, which earned him the victory of the special stage. For him it is the fourth scratch in the 6 stages held so far.
While Neuville managed to emerge unharmed from the bottom made muddy by the enormous amount of rain that fell, Sébastien Ogier and Esapekka Lappi struggled much more than him. The 8 times world champion, in addition to having to deal with rain and mud, once again had a problem in a ford.
After dealing with it very carefully, the engine of the number 17 GR Yaris Rally1 lost power and stopped, resuming a few seconds later and allowing Ogier to complete the stage.
Esapekka Lappi is the driver who faced the course in the worst conditions among the drivers at the wheel of a Rally1, but managed to grit his teeth losing 6″4 from Neuville and remaining in second place.
However, the situation in the general classification of Rally Italia Sardegna is completely different from the previous round. With this victory and the simultaneous problems with Ogier, Thierry Neuville has recovered to 7″4 from the top (he had 20 more a few stages ago) and Esapekka Lappi himself is 4″3 from the French champion.
Dani Sordo, at the wheel of the third Hyundai i20 N Rally1, found himself without an engine in the penultimate sector of the stage. His car suddenly went silent, making him lose about half a minute. Fortunately, after a brief reset, the i20 number 6 restarted, allowing him to resume the test and conclude it.
As for WRC2, Andreas Mikkelsen took advantage of the situation to gnaw just over 5 seconds off the category leader, Adrien Fourmaux. Now the advantage of the M-Sport driver stands at 15 seconds flat over the Norwegian of the TokSport team.
