WRC - ADAC Rallye : Saturday Wrap up!

After a leader-board changing on the first half of the day, the final stage of Saturday is through with Loeb at an untouchable position so far. And more unlikely too! Estonian Ott Tanak surprised everyone on SS10 & SS11 beating Loeb with considerable margin, however he reportedly stopped on SS12 after he ripped a wheel off his M-Sport Fiesta WRC. Van Merksteijn Jr too stops after crashing very close to where Tanak had. It was not a good stage for Spaniard Dani Sordo who was spotted peeking under the bonnet, and a electrical problem was suspected earlier, but it turned out that he had an impact and the front and sides of the car had tell tale damages & the car was loosing coolant from the damaged radiator.

The rally had suddenly had turned into a fight for survival or simply a strategy of attrition by Citroen's Ace. It looks very imminent that the Rally is already won, but still its not done until its done right!? Latvala was already showing the pace [really just 0.7s in 46.54km looks awesomely competitive] as he did in last year and in the opening rally of season 2012 until he crashed out. How ever the rally leader is far too tough to catch with 1m42.9s adrift from the next, and Mikko is happy with his pace today & is in 3rd overall, with over 2 mins gap of the no.1. Hope there will be potential competition else, the sport is getting boring already.

We just have 3 more stages to go tomorrow with the 30.76kms of Drontal SS to be run twice before the regular SSS at Circus Maximus @ Trier.

Here is a quickee of the action that took place today..

With the top order collapsing, it was an easy moment for the down order to recover the positions, with Mads Ostberg with his Fiesta WRC and Chris Atkinson in his Mini WRC taking 4th and 5th respectively.


Complete report of the event is compiled here