With the penultimate day of running of the 2015 Rally Italia Sardegna completed, it is Volkswagen Motorsport‘s Sébastien Ogier that has taken the lead from Hyundai‘s Hayden Paddon.
Paddon held onto his lead until SS17, when Paddon was unable to set a fast time and instead was 21 seconds off the pace. “We had a spin midway through. In itself that wasn’t a problem, but the engine wouldn’t restart. We were winding it over and over and that cost us about 10 sec. Soon after we saw [Ott] Tanak, and then we decided to take it easy and protect the car – it’s so rough.”
After SS19, Saturday’s final stage, Ogier had extended his lead over Paddon to 2 minutes 13 seconds, which will be very difficult for the New Zealander to take back. “Two fantastic days for me,” said Ogier. “I never said leading was impossible, but I knew my chances were very small. A lot of things have happened today. It’s been very rough this afternoon. This one was better and I could really enjoy it.”
In third position after today is Mads Østberg, of Citroën. He is more than a minute down on second place, after a ‘slow’ puncture in his front-right tyre.
Paddon’s teammate Thierry Neuville now sits in fourth position, ahead of M-Sport‘s Elfyn Evans. Jari-Matti Latvala is 6th.
Action from the final day of Rally Italia Sardegna gets underway tomorrow morning.
