Day 3 of 2015 LOTOS Rally Poland saw Sebastien Ogier hold on to his lead, but teammate Andreas Mikkelsen closed the gap. M-Sport retired Elfyn Evans when he sustained damage, but Ott Tanak moved up into the top three.
“On the opening stage I benefitted from the lack of dust, which made visibility difficult for the drivers behind me,” said Sebastien Ogier, leading overnight. “The stages are awesome fun to drive. It is so incredibly fast that it even takes your own breath away in the cockpit.
“Our lead over Andreas is wafer-thin. It is about as close as it was in Sweden. The spectators can look forward to an exciting finale. And I am sure that Andreas will be determined to get his first win here.”
“This morning we lost a little time on our team-mate Sébastien Ogier, partly because we made small mistakes,” said Andreas Mikkelsen. “However, we then made up ground again in the afternoon.
“My tyre selection was not the worst. We packed four hard tyres and one soft in the boot for the second run, and used the soft tyre on the closing spectator stage. In contrast, Seb was predominantly on softs.”
“I’ve had good results in the past, but never anything like this,” Ott Tanak said. “We’ve been able to show pace throughout the whole rally so far and I think it’s definitely my best performance to date.
“The rally is not over yet and Jari-Matti [Latvala] will be pushing tomorrow, there’s no doubt about that!”
“Although the car ran flawlessly, unfortunately I could not find my rhythm,” said a disappointed Jari-Matti Latvala. “The times I was setting in the morning just could not match those of the afternoon. As such, I was unable to hold Tanak at bay.”
We started off strongly this morning with two good stages but the two leading up to lunchtime service didn’t feel so good,” said Hyundai‘s Hayden Paddon, who sits fifth overnight. “The rhythm was missing and we lost some grip, which wasn’t ideal. I had a bit of a mental reset over lunchtime and the first stage of the afternoon went really well.
“The car felt good, the driving was clean and the time was decent. The penultimate stage of the day was tougher. We ran two hard tyres on the front and I nearly came off the road a few times as a result of some understeer at the beginning.
