ADAC Rally Germany - Day 1 | WRC - 2013, Ogier is the Leader !

Opening day of ADAC Rallye Deutschland [i.e., Rally Germany as most of us know] being the first of the proper tarmac rally of the WRC season, was also the home event of Volkswagen Motorsport. The grand ceremonial flag off was held in the city of Cologne in front of the historic Cathedral, late in the afternoon. 

Evening was the time for the real action and it began with SS1, where Sebastien Ogier started the rally and also took the stage win, nearly 5s ahead of his team-mate Jari-Matti Latvala. Qatar M-Sport's Thierry Neuville showed his pace here as he did in Finland and was third quickest. Sordo & Mikko, the Citroen boys finished in 4th and 5th respectively. Almost everyone experienced lack of grip and complained of understeer, however the Russian Evgeny Novikov crashed in the stage and thus ended his rally at the beginning on the opening day.

The brilliant itinerary accommodated SS2 en-route [a few kilometers down the road from the end of SS1], which ended almost near to the Service Park in Trier, Germany. The stage results were virtually the same of the first one and it just parted the gap with the top 5.

Today's stages were mostly over the plains, however tomorrow's [Friday] action shifts to the tight and fast roads around the vineyard. It is surely going to be a good fight with the VW boys and the tarmac loving drivers.

Pos	No	Driver	Time	Diff / Prev	Diff / 1st
1.	8	S. OGIER	19:33.2	0.0	0.0
2.	7	J. LATVALA	19:38.9	+5.7	+5.7
3.	11	T. NEUVILLE	19:45.9	+7.0	+12.7
4.	3	D. SORDO	19:53.7	+7.8	+20.5
5.	2	M. HIRVONEN	19:58.9	+5.2	+25.7