Rain, black ice and compacted snow
faced the crews today and tyres would, as ever, be a lottery.
Extremely conservative choices of four fully-studded tyres from the
works Citroen's, as well as Martin Prokop, Pierre Campana and others,
paid off.. Loeb's lead went up to over 2 mins 12 secs over Dani
Sordo, Mikko Hirvonen took two stage wins on SS12 and SS13 and
Campana rocketed away from Ott Tanak.
Dani Sordo was one of the drivers on
the other side of the divide, making an error with his tyre choice
and losing half a minute to Loeb. However, he faired better than the
man he was fighting for position with, Petter Solberg. Solberg began
the day with a 3.7 secs deficit to Sordo, and promptly moved ahead of
the MINI driver. It all fell apart for Solberg when he made a fairly
major error with tyre choices, running slicks on the rear in the snow
and ice. Possibly because of this, he damaged a wheel rim and a tyre
deflated, along with 1 min 46 secs. A further 9 secs were lost on the
next stage, seemingly cementing the podium places.
However, as we all know too well,
things can change rapidly in Monte Carlo, so nothing is secure until
the end of the Power Stage on Sunday morning.
Mikko Hirvonen still holds onto fourth,
but after a good tyre choice, the subsequent fastest stage times and
Solberg's tyre troubles, he has closed the gap to third down to 23.8
secs. The flying Russian, Evegny Novikov, is fifth overnight. With 45
secs and 2 mins to Francois Delecour, Novikov has seemingly secured
fifth place on his Monte début, unless something drastic (and 100%
possible) happens.
Francois Delecour has shown no
rustiness on his first World Rally in nearly a decade, running a
brilliant sixth. Pierre Campana is seventh, and after his perfect
tyre choice is nearly a minute ahead of Ott Tanak in eighth.
PG Andersson holds ninth, S-WRC class
lead and 7 min margin over S-WRC challenger Craig Breen. Tenth is
Armindo Araujo, both drivers embroiled in a close scrap over the
final WRC point.
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